


Random Segments of Code

by meanderingsoul



Category: Almost Human
Genre: Abduction, Androids, Angst and Humor, Awkward Conversations, Betrayal, Chromes - Freeform, Crimes & Criminals, Detectives, Disturbing Themes, Drinking & Talking, Dubious Morality, Dubious Science, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Gen, Interspecies Romance, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Memories, Ownership, People Watching, Politics, Prosthesis, Prostitution, Robot Feels, Roughhousing, Serious Injuries, Television Watching, conciousness, physical affection
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-03
Updated: 2017-04-03
Packaged: 2018-08-28 01:15:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 34,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8424973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meanderingsoul/pseuds/meanderingsoul
Summary: John really, really wished Dorian annoyed him more.The random bursts of mouth noises were annoying, the humming, the stupid big smiling, the unrelenting sass, that overly calm and nice voice, that face he was already used to seeing in the edges of his vision.There were so many little things, quirks and motions and emotions, that he couldn’t see how anyone could have possibly just, programmed it all. There was always something with a bot, a lag or a tone or a stiffness, some giveaway that this was a system at work, however capable or friendly it might be.Dorian had none of that, like he was Real.





	1. 0001

**Author's Note:**

> I watched Almost Human all in one week back in mid September. I had never heard of it before and knew nothing of it when it was on air, but it was truly some special storytelling and I was captivated enough to drop everything and write this. This is now far too long, but it has become something of a season two none of us ever got and it is very special to me. I am very excited to share all of it with all of you.
> 
> Just so you know, this fic uses the production order of episodes, not fox's air order. While the show is wonderful either way, the production order is much better in terms of consistent characterization. Also, not everything currently tagged will appear in this chapter, but it will all appear in the story before the end.
> 
> I hope you all enjoy.

 

 

John really, really wished Dorian annoyed him more.

The random bursts of mouth noises were annoying, the humming, the stupid big smiling, the unrelenting sass, that overly calm and nice voice, that face he was already used to seeing in the edges of his vision.

There were so many little things, quirks and motions and emotions, that he couldn’t see how anyone could have possibly just, programmed it all. There was always _something_ with a bot, a lag or a tone or a stiffness, some giveaway that this was a _system_ at work, however capable or friendly it might be.

Dorian had none of that, like he was real.

Of course he was _real_.  John had gotten used to all of this being reality again despite his brain’s best efforts. It was that, without those flickers of blue light it would be almost impossible to tell Dorian wasn’t a human.

So being annoying rather than… whatever he actually _was_ would have been way easier to deal with.

John just wasn’t used to feeling much of anything anymore but completely blank or completely pissed off or completely exhausted. He wasn’t used to worried or amused or calm or focused. Had totally forgotten the feel of that _thrill_ , of putting the pieces of a case together hours before anyone else got close, until he’d been sitting with blood on his face at a noodle counter after Dorian had tracked him down and kind of restarted his heart.

After that it had been like waking up all over again for a few weeks.

John wasn’t really sure he liked the changes.

Or, it was more he wished he didn’t like the changes.

He certainly didn’t have it coming to him.

 

*

 

Captain Maldonado stopped next to Detective Kennex’s desk, and by extension the office chair in which Dorian had been allowed to sit and work for almost two weeks. He still wasn’t sure how long he’d be allowed to remain active this time, but every day was appreciated.

The world still felt so _new_ around him. He thought it must every time.

“What are you doing here?” she said.

“Working?” John said hopefully.

“Nope. You’re, _truant_ and hoping I won’t notice. Get going.”

John sighed heavily. “Ok. I’m sorry. I’ll actually go next time.”

“Nope. You’ll go now. You still have plenty of time to get there.”

Dorian wasn’t sure where _there_ was, but since neither human had visually or verbally acknowledged his presence, he remained still and quiet like all the MX’s in the room, even though Dorian preferred to turn his chair from side to side, as long as it didn’t squeak.

“Oh come on, I…”

“John we had a deal. And it’s the one we negotiated down to. You can’t manage that we’ll go back to what the precinct wanted.”

“The precinct didn’t want me back at all,” he grumbled, maybe too quietly for anyone but Dorian to hear.

“Do not force my hand here John.”

“I’m seeing the damn psychiatrist they wanted!”

“That’s not enough for now. You proved that with the freeway incident. Dorian,” and Dorian sat up straighter and tried to look as focused and reliable as possible, “John goes to a mandatory group session on Tuesdays. He goes every Tuesday. He stays there the whole hour. Then, and only then, he’s allowed to leave. Feel free to make that actually happen.”

John glowered from 30o left of Captain Maldonado’s shoulder. It was funny, but Dorian made sure he didn’t smile in response.

“Yes Captain.”

“You can’t be serious.”

She stared down at him, squinting slightly until John sighed, slumped in a visual acquiescence if not a verbal one. Captain Maldonado nodded sharply at them and went back into her office.

Dorian stood up and waited next to John, smiling wide now that no one was really watching him. John tried to go back to whatever it was he'd been working on, he hadn’t actually told him, but Dorian continued to stare, standing scarcely five inches away.

“Ug. Fine! Just, fine. Let’s get this over with.”

Dorian followed John outside to his car, tipping his face briefly into the weak sunlight. “So where are we going exactly?” he asked.

John stayed completely silent the entire 11 minute drive and slammed his door with unnecessary force when his knee squeaked as he climbed out. Obviously he hadn’t tried the olive oil yet.

“Can’t you just sit in the car?” he asked when Dorian shut his door much more carefully.

“I’d rather not.”

“Figures,” John grumbled, but he obviously wasn’t addressing Dorian.

John also didn’t seem to think to simply order Dorian to stay in the car. Now that he’d escorted John to his appointment as requested by their captain John could have done so.

As soon as they were inside the mid-sized office building John plastered on a pained looking little smile that was probably supposed to be friendly, managed to say hello to the blond woman waiting outside an open door next to a sign that said _Coping with Anger_ in large blue letters.

“How was angry class?” he asked an hour later. John was still glowering at everything, so it couldn’t have helped much.

“God I wish I could mute you.”

Dorian decided he was more amused than offended.

By the third week Dorian started spending actual processing time coming up with new things to say after each session.

He still hadn’t managed to make John drop the awful little fake smile inside the building yet.

 

*

 

Dorian was sifting security cam footage when John reached out and tapped his shoulder at 9:55 am. It wasn’t the first time John had gotten his attention this way, but it was surprising every time. Humans generally avoided touching him, unless they were CT.

“Hey. We’ve got a briefing. You ready?”

Dorian blinked and stood and did not point out that he was not expected to be brought to meetings.

Someone pointed it out for him.

“What’s the bot doing in here?”

“Uh, we’re having a meeting Paul, about work? He works with me.”

John sat down smoothly, immediately shifting back in the seat to keep the pressure off the edges of his organic thigh. Dorian monitored the limb daily, since he hadn’t been explicitly ordered not to, checking for signs of inflammation, tightening tendons, patches of overworked skin. It was always healthy. John obviously took meticulous care of it.

But John still hadn’t tried the olive oil on his synthetic knee.

“No, _that_ works _for_ you, and he can go wait at your desk like everyone else’s.”

“Yours can’t think Paul, huh, much like a certain detective I know.”

“Guys,” Detective Stahl said, not looking up from her tablet. The amount of cover up she was wearing suggested continued sleeping problems. No one else seemed to have noticed except her MX. She had not slept well since Vogel’s funeral.

Dorian was still standing four feet inside the door. He should probably leave.

John glared steadily at Paul and kicked out another chair without looking away. “Here. Don’t you want to have a seat?”

Dorian sat without visibly hesitating, though he still wasn’t sure this was a good idea. It would be far better for him to blend in as much as possible, however little he liked it. The standard conduct of MXs was an other syntax from his. But leaving would mean disobeying a directive from John, who was his assigned detective, which would also stand out as a negative behavior.

Dorian set his hands in his lap and stayed quiet and still.

Captain Maldonado walked in three minutes later with an armful of celos, an oversized coffee, and a distracted frown, blinked at Dorian once and said nothing.

Dorian really tried to actually listen to the meeting instead of smiling aimlessly at the opaqued walls, but the task took 17% more processing power than it should have to accomplish.

John seemed to believe the blank stare was due to shared boredom with the week’s crime statistics, not happiness at being included like a real officer.

Dorian didn’t correct him.

 

*

 

They were three blocks over, a few people out walking huddled in coats and one trash truck being run along its route by an SV5 bot, before Dorian said, “You know what Henry said to me? When I was waiting with him in the cube?”

“What’s that?”

“ _Must be nice to have all the time in the world_ ,” Dorian said with a British accent but still his own voice, which was weird, then he scoffed, stared out the window, “Like I was immortal or something man.”

John waved a hand through a splotch of yellow streetlights. “Well, I mean, you don’t get sick. You don’t age. When organs and limbs break down you can just, get a new one and slot it in, be fine the same damn day. Wait, do you even have any organs?”

Dorian rolled his head around limp on his neck to face him, (and who would have thought to program something like that) staring, “I have no equivalent to the liver, spleen, gall bladder, small intestine, pancreas, or heart. I don’t really have blood either. But my skin requires a new nano coating treatment every six months to keep it from wearing thin in places. The fluid environment for my trimidium and palladium circuits has to be periodically replenished, especially if I am damaged. The micro silver relays in my skin are expensive to produce and time consuming to repair. I am not _cost effective_. The half-life of my model was estimated at around 10 years. By then we would be fully obsolete anyway, not useful anymore. _Immortal_.” He shook his head.

“Hey, usually the goal if you’re doing your job right is not to get shot up at all. But it happens. MX’s take maintenance too; no one’s going to get mad at you for needing a repair. It won’t stand out. Don’t, worry about it.”

John missed a large percentage of the subtler implications of Dorian’s words as usual. But consistent with the inconsistencies of his personality, he’d attempted to offer comfort and conversation when he could have simply ordered Dorian to be quiet again.

John portraying himself one way and then acting in another was becoming something Dorian was going to need to consider a constant rather than an irregularity.

“It’s not just my body that’s an _issue_.”

John glanced at him. “You took his case files back. 494. That’s what this is all about.”

“Darren, actually. And I had to. It isn’t… safe.”

“Hey, _I_ didn’t ask about it or say _anything_.”

“Yeah. You didn’t,” Dorian said wonderingly.

He really hadn’t said much of anything about it, imperative or derogatory, not since the traffic drone incident. Or the coffee, which really had been completely unintentional. (And it had been very strange to have one eye transmitting that sine curve of a fluid edge while the other could see out the car windows. He’d have to practice that somehow.)

Really all John had said after Captain Maldonado pointed him into her office had been, “Maldonado wants you back at your workplace _yesterday_ , so we’ve got to cut this short. You saw all the excitement anyway. Now we do _paperwork_. Got all your stuff? We’ll drop you off.”

And Dorian had seen Darren blink twice because John hadn’t wanted him there at all and DRN’s had perfect recall so there was no risk he’d forget any items like humans did and John had no obligation to return Darren to work himself or allow Dorian to go with them or to care that Darren had seen the ‘exciting parts’.

But it was exactly the kind of thing John did without thinking that made the morose and malcontent parts well worth dealing with, besides getting to be a cop again.

“I gave him back his favorite moment at a cop.”

“Ok.”

Perhaps it simply had never occurred to John that he could and probably should have ordered Dorian not to do that, that Dorian was seriously not allowed to do that, or maybe he genuinely didn’t mind the idea.

“I’ll probably talk to him again.”

“Ok? As long as you stop _bothering_ me about it.”

Dorian did stay quiet for a moment, trying not to laugh in response to the confusing mass of emotions the day had invoked. Disgust with those involved in the extortion, grief and frustration about the decommissioning, a surprising amount of happiness towards helping another DRN and towards the unconsciously intuitive, semi-functioning human being currently scowling at a red light.

“Hey, I’ll shut up if you let me drive.”

John scoffed and turned up the radio.

 

*

 

John kept his teeth gritted while he climbed out of the squad car. “Stay here, would you?”

They’d stopped near a car port by a large residential building on a small hill. They were supposed to be on the way to the Wallenberg residence, despite the badly patched windshield.

“Do you think taking the Membliss inside will stop me knowing about it?”

Dorian hadn’t spoken a word since the crash.

“Shut up. And don’t snoop or scan anything. I’m serious. Other people live here too. I’ve just got to change these boots before we head south.”

John limped inside. Dorian could see now that his synthetic foot was 6 mm thinner in circumference than his organic one. John had probably regained some body mass after the limb had originally been crafted for him at the hospital. The slipping of the new boots threw off his already tenuous hold on a normal gait.

The organic thigh was still perfectly healthy, the knee was still under-lubricated and the leg was still calibrating poorly with the receiver implants in John’s brain. His serotonin levels were still off the acceptable average. There wasn’t much Dorian could do to assist besides keep suggesting the olive oil.

The building was old, almost fifty years, wood frame and brick construction. It lacked the advancements in insulations and environmental control that newer buildings had. That must be what had kept the price low enough for John to afford a condo with a view of the lake on his salary. There were two elderly humans on the lowest floor and a small dog on the second. The top floor must belong to John. The building was somewhat upgraded with a modern elevator or John would have probably had to move.

The top floor was the also the only one with a home security system of any sophistication, but still with a very limited, unconscious AI that attempted to offer to sync the ‘new device’ with the house systems. Dorian was eventually able to impress upon it the concept of ‘coworker device’.

It was only a tiny usage blip that made Dorian snoop.

The blip went to a holographic work table, to one specific work file, clumsily encrypted, but Dorian opened it with a blink, not sure what he was expecting or looking for.

But the file was full of images, of notes, InSyndicate and the raid and all eleven humans who had died, photos of where John must have almost bled out, photos of a smiling woman with dark hair, and dozens of e-notes.

Every surface in his home was covered in them. Where he supposedly ate. Where he slept. Or perhaps didn’t sleep.

This file was accessed multiple times every day.

Dorian didn’t like it. Something about it was terribly wrong.

Dorian almost startled when John opened his door and tossed something across to land in his lap.

“Here. Band aid.”

He picked up the little square. “Band aid. You blacked out, crashed your car, and ripped my right ear off due to your illegal drug use so you brought me a band aid.”

“You don’t have to use it. Just if that, stings, maybe it’ll help. I don’t know. Why’d I even bother.”

The input from the edges of the missing ear didn’t register as pain, not even minimally, but it was uncomfortably odd. And unsightly. The band aid only helped with one of those things.

Dorian didn’t ask about the file.

Later that day, Captain Maldonado came to Mrs. Hoving’s empty house ahead of the inevitable media involvement. Dorian heard the slight hitch in her steps when she entered the deceased daughter’s bedroom and saw the e-note wall.

“I think I know why you assigned me to John,” he said.

After a moment he turned his head to look at her.

Human faces could express so many varied emotions simultaneously, altogether in a muddle. He’d never quite understood that, or how it must feel, but he could clearly see some of the same terror he’d felt when he’d first compared this to the one in John’s home.

Captain Maldonado met his eyes directly, gave him the same kind of brisk nod as she did her other officers and left.

Dorian never mentioned it again, but the first time John brought him into his home and he checked it was all gone.

 

*

 

When it had happened, Sandra had made sure she was one of the first on the scene after the paramedics. The block had been cordoned off, the scrolling cautionary tape up everywhere, numbered tags, blue and red lights.

She remembered back when the caution tape had still been plastic, and that sound, a flapping and buzzing, it made in the wind.

There was no wind. The air was thick with blood.

They all had masks on, but it didn’t stop the smell. There was an unidentified powder over the whole scene, not biological, but unknown and complex and odd enough to contaminate any hope they had of tracking InSyndicate members from here. Somebody’s little custom device to cover any tracks, not on the black market, and not enough of it left for Tech to reconstruct.

John had tapped the call for backup as soon as the shooting started, but they’d still tried to move forward with the op, capture someone, anyone, get any kind of break to use against InSyndicate.

Only 12 minutes for backup officers to arrive. 8 of those where she’d had no feed at all. 500 MX’s in the city now and they were still short-staffed.

One of her MX’s dropped an evidence tag on something oblong and dusty, across the alley. She knew what it was.

She looked once anyway.

If John made it to the hospital he might recover. The blood loss had been devastating. She’d stepped around it, not over. She closed Pelham’s eyes herself. Watkins had been shot in the head. Nielson bled out belly down on the ground.

MX parts were scattered from one end of the alley to the other. They’d known exactly where to shoot, right eyes, necks, inner hips, shoulders. They shouldn’t have been able to know that. The MX 43 design was still highly classified.

It had been a Thursday morning, the raid.

She waited until Friday night, after the phone calls and house calls and preliminary incident reports and the thrice damned media, to lock her doors and drink herself nauseous and blurry eyed with cheap scotch, sick with the names of the dead and the way John looked in the ICU, grey and unresponsive with pieces of himself left back in the street.

Then she drank some more till she blacked out on the couch, woke up with numb feet and Tapper lying on her legs with a mournful look, skinny tail still.

Her face ended up wet because she let Tapper lick her. Not for any other reason.

Monday the office was silent, Vogel looking stunned and Paul livid. A few people had left flowers and notes on Pelham’s and Nielson’s desks. John’s was meticulously untouched, stylus at the exact same angle he’d left it.

Sandra checked her work phone and her personal phone and with the hospital and a few street patrol cameras, but there was still no sign of Anna. She’d called her herself of course, after, but got a message recorder, had tried to explain.

This didn’t make sense.

She told Vogel to start looking for Anna that morning. Vogel looked up to Kennex. He didn’t ask questions. Paul she sent out on an unrelated case before he lost his composure.

She didn’t go back to the hospital that day, checking in by phone, but she went the next, once they’d moved him out of the ICU. It was pretty likely he’d survive now. Apparently. She’d been his medical power of attorney ever since Edward Kennex had died, even before John lost his mother four years later to a sudden stroke.

He looked terrible. Pale and still and there were so many tubes all over the place she was scared to hold his hand or touch his arms.

She ended up running her fingertips back through his hair, even though it was a little stiff and tacky and he didn’t so much as twitch.

“He’s stable for now, no signs of infection, but he is still completely comatose. He could remain in the coma a few more weeks with no long lasting repercussions. Between the trauma and the anesthesia, there no need to worry yet.”

Sandra hadn’t heard the doctor come in, but she nodded and kept petting through John’s hair.

“I do need to talk to you about some reconstructive options.”

“Ok.”

“Obviously the intensity of the preparations for a prosthetic depends on the expected activity level. For anyone older or perhaps retiring we tend to go with…”

“No,” she cut her off. “No. He needs to be able to run. I need him back at work.”

She got Rudy to tell her which hub was the best on the open market and pretended John might ever be ok with any of it.

After his place had been checked for bugs, for evidence about the raid, for signs that Anna had left against her will, Sandra drove out to it. She defrosted the freezer, tossed the takeout boxes and the yoghurt that obviously only Anna ate. She pulled down all the blinds, checked the skylights were closed tight, made sure no one had found the tablet where John hid his porn collection and family photos, confirmed for herself that it hadn’t been tampered with or monitored somehow.

It hadn’t. They’d found no monitoring devices, no signs of home invasion, no evidence of hacking. No evidence of struggle either. But security footage had obviously been changed. The spaces where Anna’s things had been were simply empty.

This didn’t make sense. Six days ago John had been asking her opinion about pictures of engagement rings on their lunch break.

She’d carried all the plants to her car, turned off everything but the heat and left.

She’d tried not to get her hopes up too high after a month, when he started blinking his eyes open during the day light. If he woke up soon the effects of the coma should be minimal. He hadn’t lost that much muscle tone yet. The hub implant where they’d reconstructed his remaining thigh was healing well. They still had three leads on InSyndicate that weren’t cold. There was still time.

But then he’d stayed like that for 10 months. No purposeful movements, no attempts to speak or look at anything. When she came and sat with him he didn’t know she was there.

The department was stable enough. She was leaning on Paul more than she’d like. Vogel was too young and Stahl far too new. They had a few other detectives come through, work on a few month basis, in between transfers or other people’s vacations or on their way to other precincts.

She wouldn’t accept a new lieutenant. John would wake up.

13 months and he was in something they called a minimally conscious state. He could cough, sit up if someone helped, look in the right direction if someone said his name. All of it was still intermittent, but it was progress.

And she was so glad to hear about it. Had gone a few days early to see him. But when she’d walked in and he caught sight of her he’d tried so hard to scream.

She couldn’t keep it together. Ended up locking herself in a bathroom somewhere, sobbing dry eyed with her wrist between her teeth.

But she went back in and sat down and talked about that week’s stupid little cases, robbers that had no idea what they were doing, drunks. His eyes moved towards her sometimes, then tracked away around the little room. He shifted his head sideways towards her hand.

It seemed like he woke up the rest of the way all at once. She knew on some level it had been more gradual, but he couldn’t talk and then he could.

When she let herself into his room he met her eyes for a long moment, then turned his back.

“Last thing I remember we’d just talked about planning a big raid on some InSyndicate drop point.”

His voice was flat, more gravel than sound. Rusted. They’d told her some amnesia would be likely, but it still didn’t help. “That was two years ago John.”

“Oh I know. They told me.”

“I’m so sorry.”

He stayed silent and still again.

“John?”

She didn’t touch him. They’d never been the kind of friends that hugged much.

“Call me when you want some company and I’ll come back,” she’d said.

Of course he hadn’t called.

She hadn’t expected him to.

 

*

 

There were ghosts left behind in the memory wipe.

Wiping a hard drive but needing it to still be _useful_ after cut down on the effectiveness of the wipe. There were spots that didn’t get erased all the way, snatches of fragged files that Dorian recollected one by one and encrypted and saved away for himself deep down inside his tertiary brain, somewhere no one would think to look.

They could still find it, of course they could, but it would take the kind of digging that only 3% of the human population was really capable of. Dorian thought Rudy probably wouldn’t dig that far.

He could see a battered ping pong table in a basement room.

Red blood, hot and wet under his pressing hands, the rest of the image in static fuzzed greys.

Someone’s broad hand stroked over his hair once, while he lay on his side in a pod, and he swatted at them, could feel himself smiling. It was a different kind of charge pod than he had to share with MX’s, smaller, padded, horizontal. There was no visual data, like his eyes had been shut.

The sound of sirens and a light rail line. Green lights. Someone was begging.

Another DRN standing in front of him, a female model, dark waves of hair, her face a blur of yellow and cream that he couldn’t make out except for a pair of deep yellow eyes, a strong hand near his facial relay.

He’d had almost two years awake, serving here. He’d been together with many DRNs, perhaps like brothers and sisters, had had this important work, maybe even friends.

He couldn’t really remember any of it except that bright white room where they’d told him to lie down and everything had gone black.

 

*

 

Dorian stared out at the greenish bands of the Leon suspension bridge and the deep lake water like he was totally occupied in what he was seeing. He did that every time they got outside the main city grid, even if it was just a muddy patch of shoreline dotted with garbage.

It was a nice day again, a cool north breeze keeping the full sunlight from being too hot. The green forest on the hills hid the shorter neighborhoods and stores and schools, where the buildings were all five stories or less. You couldn’t find anything less than three levels in the city anymore, but the city kept to the shorelines for more miles than anyone could drive in three days. The hills still felt older.

Something about the failed heist was still bothering him.

There were so many risks involved to get that much palladium. And the equipment to pull it off wouldn’t have come cheap. Face-makers, light bombs, new guns and ammunition. Black market prices for palladium were steep, so it was someone who already had deep pockets and wanted them deeper, or someone who wanted the palladium for themselves really bad. This heist had had a sponsor, a prearranged buyer, but there’d been no hint of an identity, no hint of a money trail anonymous or otherwise. John couldn’t prove anything.

John parked in the carport and Dorian followed him quietly inside to the elevator. He could tell the guy was still tired, even though it’d been a few days. Watching him slump against tables and loll his head back against the car seat had been weird, like Dorian got the same fizzy heaviness in his limbs as an exhausted human.

John figured getting shot eight times would take a lot out of you. He’d caught a glimpse through a tear in Dorian’s shirt, glossy purple dents in the skin almost like bruises.

“Well? Have at it. Might as well give you permission to snoop to your hearts, or equivalent pumps, content since that’s what you’re going to do.”

John ignored him, tugged off his holster and dropped it on the worktable, went into his bathroom to pull on a pair of old jeans, drink some water, give Dorian a few minutes to do something.

But Dorian hadn’t moved from five feet inside the door.

“Your favorite color is red?”

“I guess.” All the accents had been red already when he’d first saved up and bought the place, and John had never given it much thought.

“Statistically only 8% of human males prefer that color over all others.”

“Well, go me,” John said, propping a few of the skylight windows open for fresh air.

Dorian was actually in the kitchen now, some disco face going at his left temple.

“John.”

“What?”

“There is no food in your apartment.”

“So?”

“So?” Dorian said back to him in his voice the asshole. “You live here man, and you have to eat.”

“I eat! I order stuff.”

He had milk and ground coffee delivered once a week and the Malaysian place near the bottom of the hill was great for dinner if he didn’t eat in the city. Sometimes he remembered to stop and pick up eggs and cheese and bread. That was plenty. He’d forgotten most of the time at first.

“If the total extent of your standard diet was just the cheap noodles and donuts I usually see you consume, your vitamin levels would be way more off than they already are.”

“What…? I order good stuff too! Lots of people do grocery delivery now. I just can’t, you know cook anything.”

Dorian was giving him that look. “You don’t even have a _frypan_ John. Isn’t that a standard household item?”

“I just buy hardboiled eggs. It’s not a big deal.”

Dorian was still giving him that fucking look. “This is sad John.”

John pretended to take a nap in the afternoon sunlight while Dorian looked through every kitchen cupboard, at all his book titles, through his closets, stuck his head out to look at the roof patio, and finally plucked at a guitar string in a way that made John blink himself back into real consciousness.

“Can you play?” Dorian asked.

“Yeah?”

“Will you play me something?”

“Not today.”

“Why’d you bring me home with you man?”

John shrugged, couldn’t seem to say how or why it had seemed the thing to do after their last few weeks, after how torn up Dorian had seemed about Vanessa, after seeing him sparking blue on the floor with his legs unresponsive and a gun to his head, and the way he’d told John hesitantly afterwards that he didn’t want to die like it had _surprised_ him.

John hadn’t been worried by that or anything. It definitely hadn’t been familiar.

They ended up playing Portal for three hours before John drove Dorian back to the Factory for the weekend.

John had almost hurt something choking on laughter when Dorian got frustrated and cussed out GLaDOS in the same calm and even voice he used for almost everything else.

 

*

 

Dorian didn’t tell anybody he could still talk to Darren.

It was a simple echo-patch, a slightly different query line piggybacking on the old DRN to DRN police channels that were all empty except for Dorian. He’d thought it up during the ride back to the precinct, Darren riding shotgun so he wasn’t left sitting alone with their perp. John had been silent except for the occasional comment over the police radio.

Darren had a lot of down time. It only took them four hours to recharge after a low intensity day, and the hospital didn’t involve him in SV type busywork like the precinct did MX’s (and by extension Dorian. Supposedly it was for security reasons, but it was probably just cheaper.)

Darren worked a twelve hour shift every day from 1 am to 1 pm, repairing the diagnostic interfaces or security cameras or imaging scanners. The evening shift was one of the older KHNs, the kind they’d replaced. They could appear friendly, smile and frown. But they were like most bots, like the simple interfaces that gave the average sex bot their sweet demeanor or made sure MX’s did not move in a threatening manner around civilians. KHN’s could smile back at someone, could exchange pleasantries.

They couldn’t _converse_. If you asked them if they’d seen anyone interesting that day, or a nice cloud, or how the fluffy grey rat that lived in the alley behind the building was, they’d blink and smile and ask you to please clarify. And the humans who worked at the hospital didn’t really understand the differences in the models, didn’t talk to him.

Dorian wasn’t sure how Darren had managed to not go insane after four years of it.

Darren pinged him at least once a day since he’d found the patch, which hadn’t taken him long. Sometimes it was just an image, a late night orange tinged cloud that he said looked like a frowning face, or a cricket he’d taken outside, or the small pile of outdated metal coins he’d collected and hid behind his charge pod. Many stores didn’t even accept them as currency anymore.

Darren still didn’t want to be a cop again. Darren was more afraid of things, of mistakes and human people and pain, was perhaps gentler in some fundamental way than Dorian.

Or maybe Dorian had used to be gentler too. He didn’t have any way to know. They’d all been different in so many little ways. Dorian had almost forgotten that, being the only one around since he’d woken up.

Dorian asked once he’d figured out how to phrase it, the concept of wanting to be other than a police officer and alive was inexplicable to him, but Darren said he truly didn’t mind fixing things for the hospital. It was lonely and frequently boring, but there were far worse things that could have happened to him and they both knew it. Hospitals were important. Humans had to be repaired much more quickly than bots. They couldn’t put themselves in standby and wait, could never be reactivated later once they’d died. (But they’d both agreed not to reinstate his EMT protocols after the Incident.)

From 1 pm to 8 pm Darren had nothing to do, but his movements weren’t as monitored as Dorian’s. He let himself out onto the flat portion of the hospital roof every day to watch the sun go down. Dorian told him to watch for the space station, that one of them might be up there. Darren waved every night now just in case.

On impulse Dorian pinged _Had to kill a bot today. Not one of us, but still. Tell me something nice._ He didn’t mention the case or Vanessa or the flash of being decommissioned or the crunch of a human spine or the way Rudy’s blood had smelled or watching John strike a suspect and feeling no remorse whatsoever. There was no reason he should tell Darren these things.

Darren didn’t ask for clarification, gave him a thorough update on the nearby flock of pigeons. Grey 23 and Speckled 9 were nesting over the dumpster light. Grey 17 had landed nearby enough for him to hear its tiny heart when he’d tossed out a piece of bread. White 4 liked to nap on a third floor windowsill.

Dorian rarely felt he had much that was nice to offer Darren in return, the incredible fractal matrix of a beehive, images from riding over the Leon Bridge, but Darren didn’t seem to mind.

He described the experience of eating once, after John made him try. Darren had thought it sounded too strange and messy to ever want to try himself, even after Dorian pinged him the flavor data.

He hoped the daily pings helped Darren as much as they had helped Dorian with being surrounded by MXs, who seemed to watch him constantly for signs of inevitable crazy.

 

*

 

Dorian had been careful to be friendly to Detective Stahl from the start.

She was one of the few who hadn’t given him those strange, waiting looks for his first few days awake, like he might lose it at any minute. Her record was very good. She’d been moved to detective work after only three years, but two of those had been spent gaining significant skills in the Cyber Crime Department. She seemed more aware of her MX than some of the other officers, as if she had a better grasp on what he was and what he could do. Dorian appreciated that kind of deference, even though he didn’t approve of the theories behind the MXs themselves.

There were all those factors to consider, in addition to the simple fact that Dorian would need to impress and appeal to as many of John’s coworkers as possible, in addition to John himself and Captain Maldonado, to lengthen the amount of time he was likely to be allowed to remain in service as a cop again, and Detective Paul was not a candidate for that.

That, and the mutual crush between her and John that had been obvious within the first 45 seconds of watching them interact.

John’s reasons were obvious. Stahl was very attractive by typical human standards and appeared to be John’s preferred type, brunette and intelligent with a warm demeanor, something Dorian had been able to pick out from watching how his eyes tracked in crowds long before John ever managed to articulate it to him. John was lonely and felt isolated from other humans and Stahl had made repeated friendly gestures. In this if nothing else, John was easy.

Stahl was unknown. She avoided other Chromes meticulously, and John was emphatically not a Chrome, with various neurotic tendencies and an inclination towards substance abuse, several natural physical imperfections in his facial structure, though he was still considered very attractive by human standards, and the trans-femoral amputation of his right leg.

The leg deformation didn’t seem to be any particular draw. Dorian checked of course, had to notice these things since he was programmed with an immense database of psychological warning signs for humans, whose motives for crime were often equally pedestrian and peculiar.

It took him 2.6 weeks to confirm the real reason, through overheard comments and photos and mourning patterns, some internalized amount of admiration transferred from Vogel, who had looked up to John as a mentor and to whom Dorian had never spoken before he died.

It was a harmless motive. Stahl was both a safe social option for John and a relationship formed between them was likely to be mutually beneficial as they shared several key personality traits. Despite John’s many issues with everything, like sleeping, eating more than once a day, and traffic laws, he seemed to have no issues surrounding Chromes. Dorian tried to be encouraging.

Also, watching John flounder his way through normal social situations was frequently hilarious.

Still, it barely registered when Stahl’s MX made some comment about Dorian’s visual processing speed, which was 20% slower than an MX, and the facial recognition update he was due for, which was at least true, but inevitably lead to some statement about fundamental inferiority, which Dorian would never believe and therefore ignored.

It wasn’t anything various MXs hadn’t said to Dorian before throughout these last couple months, but Detective Stahl looked very startled.

“Max! That’s very rude. There’s no reason to say things like that.”

MX-43-700, apparently called Max, and Dorian glanced at each other and did not communicate at all.

“Understood,” Max said to Detective Stahl after a moment, one red relay still tracing back under his outer helmet.

Stahl frowned between them, but went back to her daily net searches.

Dorian went back to relaying security drone footage between his internal net and John’s workstation, scanning for someone John claimed would be a person of interest on their current smuggling case, even though they hadn’t been seen in the city in four months.

Stahl sighed heavily, pushed her long hair back behind her shoulders. “Max, would you get me another coffee? You know how I like it.”

“Yes detective,” he said and stood, quickly disappearing down the hallway towards the breakroom.

“You speak to your MX differently than most officers.”

Stahl blinked over at him. It had taken a few awkward attempts at talking to her before she would respond to him conversationally. Dorian knew he was the only DRN she’d ever seen.

Stahl tapped her stylus on her desk. “This might sound weird, and I really don’t want you to take it the wrong way. I have to admit, I always had dogs around as a kid. One was mine, but my dad kept hunting dogs around, and even my dog was trained as a guard dog on some level. There’s a command and praise structure you get used to speaking in, same as the force used to do with canine units. I think it comes from that. But, that probably isn’t the best way to think about it. It’s _definitely_ not the way they tell us to think about it in the academy.”

Dorian thought it likely he didn’t want to know how new cops were instructed to utilize androids in the police academies.

“And it’s not like I don’t know the intelligence level is very different. Max can access and sort so much information so quickly, but they can’t always think things through the same. You have to be specific. I suppose it’s probably a bad habit.”

Dogs were organic creatures; though they worked for humans sometimes, they were frequently recipients of affection independent from performance. They had various legal protections against harm or misuse, far more than MXs had, or Dorian.

“I don’t think that’s a bad thing at all,” he said.

Stahl smiled at him before her attention turned to thanking Max for the steaming mug of coffee he’d brought her.

John walked in right when Dorian threw the image of John’s person of interest, who was in fact back in the city, up onto a work screen.

“Yup. That’s Freddie Stone alright, the weasley little prick. Let’s go talk to him,” John said, clapping Dorian absently on the shoulder as he grabbed his jacket.

Dorian was just realizing John had only ever spoken to him like a person (with the exception of the one, idiotic synthetic-off comment) perhaps a person he loathed at first, but still like a real person.

 

*

 

John drove them to the Wall, pulled into an open lot near the water and parked.

Dorian needed urgent repairs, had several warnings about power loss rates and fascia pressures flicking over his vision. John badly needed rest and ice for his bruises. His three loosened teeth had been fixed on site by EMT’s, two fingers on his right hand relocated. His leg was at 33%, still enough charge to return to his home.

Dorian left ridiculous amounts of his processing capabilities busily watching John’s oxygen saturation levels and circulation and the level of norepinephrine that was still too high.

Danica could have killed him so _easily_.

They hadn’t spoken the whole drive. Dorian wasn’t sure he even _remembered_ it all, which should have been impossible.

The metals of the car ticked and contracted in the cool air.

John kept the doors locked.

“I still don’t think you’re right, about where Vaughn would have gone. But even if you were, we can’t go after him over there, either of us. You get that, right? It’s too dangerous.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean _why_? It’s the _Wall_ Dorian.”

“I don’t really know what happened. I can’t get into precinct files about it without the system flagging me. The information available over general ViFi is well restricted, the deep net history is inaccessible, and the information on the Darknet is useless theories. No one’s ever told me about it.”

John glanced at him, inscrutable brows furrowed and the greens of his eyes blackened in dim city light. He finally sighed, and shifted down in the seat to change the pressure points along his right thigh. John might make disparaging comments about therapists of all types, but he was always careful of how he sat and moved.

“The Wall is three stories high and four feet thick, fiber reinforced concrete and rebar, and a core of 3 inch lead blocks. And they managed to construct it in under a year.

What happened behind the Wall, and places like it, like Old Tokyo, like Old Pittsburg, is half the reason they came up with LightBombs and stuff like parabolic pulse charges in the first place. Radiation null, minimal fire. Blow up whatever you want without affecting the stuff around it. Still gives off the EMP and concussive forces people want, but they don’t linger.

One of the sides in the War, and there were too many sides for anyone to understand, I was barely a teenager, figured out a new particle bomb. No one has ever figured out what it really was, thank God. They’ve never been able to reproduce it in a lab. At least, no one’s owned up to it. But someone knew and they made two dozen of them and sold them off one by one.

It was probably supposed to take out the whole city, but the dome shield that got sent with the bomb fell too low or didn’t have enough power. The bomb only exploded over half. And everybody was so busy with putting out the fires and with search and rescue no one thought to check if it was more than just another bomb. By then it was already too late for a lot of people.”

“Why do people still live in there if it’s so dangerous?”

“There’s no surveillance. None. That radiation turns everything to static. We can’t even get satellite images that aren’t blurry. Fly a drone too low and it’ll go dead. That’s why we have to keep up the Watch no matter how short staffed we get. We used to air drop supplies in there, but after a while no one came to get any of it and people decided to stop.

Some people moved right in there once the fires were out thinking the privacy would be worth it, before how long the chain decay on that radiation probably was hit the media. Some cults still went in all together. Some crime organizations thought it’d be a good way to make it rich. Nobody knew at first what it would really do.

See, it doesn’t kill you or burn you or get in your bones and make you feel sick. It targets the brain. It does… terrible things. I don’t know how people are still alive in there. I don’t know if they’re still even _people_.”

“They’re still people John.”

“Maybe. But they aren’t like us. They don’t think like us, move like us anymore. You hear people say Individuals. That radiation turns you into something else, something inhuman.”

“People say that about Chromes.” About me he didn’t say.

John snorted. “A _fancy_ person is still a person. Stahl still thinks and acts and sleeps like a person, just like you and me. Individuals… don’t. You’ll get it if you ever see one. I hope you don’t. Its…”

He fell silent. Dorian was replaying over and over the way John had just insisted he was a person on the same level John was a person.

“I really don’t care if you’re right or wrong about Vaughn. If he went in there he’ll never come back out. His body might try, but it won’t be the guy who created you, not even whatever was left of him yesterday.”

“He’ll try to build more androids. Maybe more XRNs.”

“Doesn’t matter. If he’s over there it is not our problem. There’s so few ways in or out of there. If he even survives. What I _don’t_ know is what that kind of radiation would do to you. You stay the hell away from the Wall.”

“John…”

“No! You tell me right now you’ll stay away.”

Dorian was startled by the sudden vehemence, enough to recoil a little from where he’d leaned in while John spoke. “Ok man. Sure.”

John nodded and turned his face away, conversation obviously over, but he didn’t start the car. When he spoke again his voice was hushed like there was someone who might be waiting for him to speak so they could act.

“You know, what’s worse, what most people don’t know about, they’re still not really sure it _is_ just radiation, like something biological was mixed in. Don’t you see the trees over there sometimes? They don’t look right. The grass. The little gardens we never, ever spot anybody taking care of. But an Individual looks exactly the same as us until they move.”

Dorian tried not to think of what the unidentified substance might do to hundreds of exposed, nascent DRN souls. Or if maybe that had always been the plan.

He looked up at the Wall, the bright lights along the top, and turned his face away.

 

*

 

Richard never knew what the hell to think of Kennex and his pet DRN.

Oh, he knew what the hell he thought of Kennex. Didn’t matter what the guys’ solve rate was, he was an unpredictable hothead who thought he was too damn good for the rules, and as much as Richard respected Maldonado she never should have pushed for him to be allowed back on the force.

He could get feeling like you owed someone after they took a bullet for you, but that only went so far.

Kennex had blown that raid somehow. Everyone knew it. Pelham, he’d been a good guy, had deserved better. And Nielson? Jesus Christ. He’d only had another year before he was going to retire from the force and wasn’t even supposed to be outside a squad car for that raid. Two kids about to graduate high school. There was no making up for that.

Richard hadn’t ever been partnered with a DRN before the switchover, but he had worked with several of the same ones over time. Back then it had been more standard to have ten or so assigned to a department and they rode out with officers on a needs basis. Hearing them talk and watching how they could move like people had been amazing after the KHNs, but he’d seen a couple lose it and whatever people said now it had been ugly.

One of Vice’s DRNs sat down in a corner one night, started crying and never stopped. One jumped out of their officer’s patrol car in front of a truck, got ground to blue mush. He couldn’t remember the officer’s name anymore, but she’d left the force, had refused to tell anyone what she’d been talking about with the DRN before he jumped. (But from the look on her face, it was like she’d thought something she said had made him do it.)

One time, towards the end of it, he’d seen one blow another away mid-sentence before eating four bullets. The hand had just kept pulling the trigger even after the top of the head was long gone. (Not that dealing with a junkie who’d fired a shotgun at their sisters little kid before passing out on the couch, while the kid screamed on the floor until a neighbor called the cops, wasn’t enough to make _anyone_ want to just fucking end it all.) And then he’d had a crime scene in a rough part of town, one new officer who was next to useless, two bots oozing everywhere with no faces, and no damn backup.

Later that year he’d transferred out of Vice over to homicide detective work, around the same time the MX’s got introduced on a one on one basis and had never worried about it too much. No cheating ex-wife. No surprises. Fresh start.

Kennex hadn’t been that bad before the raid, not really, he could make himself admit it. The guy had always been kind of an unprofessional jackass, but it had been obvious he was Maldonado’s right hand and they liked it that way. And Richard had been told more than twice that he was too blunt and insensitive. Nobody filed any formal reprimands and the department ran along like a machine.

Now, Kennex was a nightmare, obviously fucked in the head, destroying property, taking that old DRN everywhere like a security blanket. Maybe he was technically functioning as a detective again, but it was only a matter of time before he really fucked something up. Again. And there was something… off about that DRN. It wasn’t like the ones he remembered.

Richard did his best to ignore the shitshow on a day to day basis.

When the blackout happened and the DRN made it obvious it really did have a few screws loose of course Kennex had just stood there eating a donut like this was the show he’d picked out on the damn TV.

Seriously, screw them both.

Then later Dorian was watching the trailer fire with a way too interested expression, like he wanted to go touch it or something, and Richard was starting to have crazy thoughts about asking his MX to maybe hold on to the back of the bot’s jacket or something in case he tried to go hug the fire next, when Officer Nimitz ran up and said Kennex was missing.

The DRN jumped over the hood of the car before Richard could even blink, bolted for the road so fast he slipped on the grass.

He’d been pacing around mumbling by the time anyone else got there. “All tire tracks generic. No heat traces. No blood. I can’t get a lock on his locator. It’s not transmitting. I’m too slow today and it’s _all your fault_!”

Richard flinched back despite himself when Dorian yelled into his face, but the bot backed off immediately.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t yell. You’re freaking people out. They’ll think I’m crazy.”

Richard honestly had no idea what to say. Half the sentence had been in Kennex’s voice somehow, but it was obvious the DRN was as genuinely upset as it was possible for a bot to be.

And it wasn’t like this was a failure to protect issue, no one had seen who took Kennex, there’d been no sounds of distress, and the DRN had been exactly where Kennex had told him to stay. But when the sicko put a picture of Kennex smiling up on a nearby billboard just to rub it in that he could, Dorian made a little upset sound and looked away.

“We’re gonna get him back,” Richard found himself saying to a bot’s slumped shoulders, because this wasn’t protection protocol or crazy or anything else in DRN programming. This was loyalty, and he’d never had any idea DRN’s were capable of that and the clock tower only proved him right.

Kennex was still flushed and grinning like a lunatic, letting a bomb tech get the collar off him and an MX undo the cuff on his leg without even being an asshole about it. That lasted until two MX’s carried Dorian by on their way to one of the vans.

Richard held up his hands to stop him. “Whoah, easy! Dorians fine, he just ran out of charge.”

“Oh yeah? Whose fault is that?” Kennex had got quiet, sidled in way too close, leaning down in a way that made you remember how tall he was. Richard remembered seeing him make a suspect piss themselves with this routine while Maldonado sat primly across the table and reoffered them a plea deal.

“Hey, he just climbed that clock tower for your useless ass princess. You think you could maybe manage not to be a damn basket case without him holding the leash for _five fucking minutes_?”

Kennex blinked at him once like he was the fucking robot, then stepped around him and all but shoved some EMT out of the way so he could carefully close Dorian’s eyes.

So when IA started asking Richard extra, probing questions during the yearly reviews he knew what to say.

“Look, I like the MX’s. They’re stable. They do good work, no going off the grid and complicating things, no surprises. The public feels like they can trust them, and lord knows we hadn’t had that in decades. They free up a lot of officers from hours of dealing with basic traffic violations. They’re not much good at detective work, but they’re great for crime scene analysis. Really speeds that up. Margin of error is tiny.”

“We appreciate your viewpoint on the MX program, but…”

“My point is, that’s not what the DRN does. They weren’t designed exclusively for detective work, but that’s how he operates. As a detective. He thinks through the cases he’s on, looks for patterns and likely alternatives, all the same stuff we would do. He isn’t a drain or an inhibition on the department or whatever you were trying to see if I’d admit to. It’s no secret in the force that Kennex is a hothead, good, but still a hothead. The Captain can reign him in of course, but there’s never been an MX built that could keep up with that all day. That DRN will keep him alive.”

“Thank you for your observations detective,” one of them said eventually.

“Sure, no problem.”

 

*

 

“I have a favor to ask you.”

Sandra quirked an eyebrow at him. “Oh?”

“It’s about Dorian’s charging problem.”

She waved a hand, took a slow sip of her drink. “Next time he’ll get a higher charge priority, I guarantee it. He performed great today, but I know the personality issues weren’t actually fun for anyone. And yes, I know he slugged Detective Paul while you _watched_ ,” and John giggled silently against the back of his hand, the jackass, “but Paul hasn’t actually taken any formal action so I get to ignore it. They worked well together, while you’d been abducted.”

“Wow, miracles are real then.”

Sandra laughed quietly and they sipped their glasses of her emergency good scotch in silence for a few peaceful minutes.

It was nice, to just sit with her. Things had been so busy these last few months. So many big crises, one after another. John swirled the scotch in his glass and breathed in. Sandra had bought him his first taste of 20 year old Macallan, shit, thirteen years ago now, after his first year. They’d been in this together a long time now, even with the way they got started.

John figured the whole being abducted by some high strung little twerp thing would hit him later, waking up cuffed by the prosthetic and still unable to escape, having his locator chip dug out while he’d been unconscious, which was a lot of cops worst nightmare these days, having to shove some fretting EMT person out of the way so he could close Dorian’s eyes for him when two MX’s went by with him slung between them like a worn out sofa. Paul had actually come over to tell him he would be fine. He might never live that down either.

He might still be able to get a few hours of sleep before it all hit. There was still work tomorrow.

“He still needs a different space to charge Sandra.”

Sandra groaned and tipped back the last of her drink. “John we’ve talked about this. I can’t explain the real issues in play to legal, and they’re not going to clear him for his own space on whatever vague excuses I can give them. The police _cannot_ have combat capable bots unaccounted for. And you know damn well why I don’t want either of you under increased precinct scrutiny.”

“I get that Sandra, but it’s a nightmare down there. In the Factory levels. Have you even been down there? The funky lighting, the hum, MX’s with no pants on. He brings it up maybe every four days now and I can’t even be mad.”

“He can’t have his own place John. Didn’t you tell him weeks ago?”

John slouched down further into her office chair. “It uh, came up again recently.”

So John hadn’t said anything as soon as he knew the answer was no. Typical.

“Any suggestions for me then? Because either of us signing off on an apartment for him is still out of the question.”

“I don’t want him living with me. I can’t handle that,” John admitted, staring fixedly at the grey carpet. He couldn’t articulate why, not even in his head. He had the space, and despite his best efforts he _liked_ Dorian. He already saw the guy almost every day of the week. Would it really be that big of a deal?

But the idea of something else alive in his apartment made him want to jump out a window.

“I’m sure Dorian would prefer it, but I don’t think that’s a good idea anyway. Still would draw too much of the wrong kinds of attention. I need a few more big, very public successes from you two to shove in the right faces first.”

“I’ll never understand how you think about all that stuff all the time. Wait, wrong kind of attention. What’s that mean?”

Sandra shook her head, topping up her glass. “Nothing John. Drink your scotch.”

“Couldn’t he stay at the lab instead?”

“Explain.”

“Rudy’s… lonely. He’s forgetting to eat again, haven’t you noticed? He’s got the space. I’m sure he’d be fine with it.”

She had noticed Rudy had lost some weight, had been meaning to have a word with Phillip. “Oh, Rudy will be thrilled. I don’t doubt that. Will Dorian?”

“Probably not. That’ll be funny.”

Sandra rolled her eyes. “John.”

“Look, it has to be better for him than being down in that sardine can full of cylons.”

“Cylons is a little harsh.”

“No it’s not.”

Sandra watched him thinking, searching for the words for the thoughts he hadn’t consciously had for whatever conclusion he’d already reached, legs sprawled out in front of him in everyone else’s way the exact same way he’d always sat.

“The MX’s, they don’t have any emotions, they aren’t capable of it, there’s no depth in them, but they have social concepts embedded, to deal with us. They have a hierarchy. They look down on him for being older, for talking _colloquially_ , for whatever makes him not one of them. They all really believe they’re the superior model, like people say they are, not just newer and cheaper. They’re mean to him. It’s like a primary school playground thing.”

Sandra was having a terrible feeling that John had shot that MX because it had been mouthing off about Dorian. So she didn’t ask. “Has Dorian complained about this?”

“Not really. He’s complained about them staring at him with their lifeless eyes, and he kind of explained the hierarchy stuff. Anyone that works with Stahl moves up for some reason. But it’s not hard to pick up on when he talks to one.

It was so weird seeing him with another DRN that one time, not just cause it was one of the ones that looked just like him. They move different around each other, talk different. I don’t know, it’s a whole different personal space system. And it’s weird stuff. Why is it normal for them in the middle of a conversation, to just pop out the newest, coolest eyeball so the other one can look at it? He’s always upset if something bangs up his face so it looks bad, but unscrewing your own eye is just fine. How does that make sense? Nobody programs like that.”

Sandra tried desperately not to laugh. It would set the wrong tone about that whole incident. “You cannot pull that crap again John.”

“Yeah, yeah. I won’t.”

Though Sandra knew damn well it hadn’t been John’s idea to let a hospital owned DRN leave work without any authorization of any kind to go on a police ride-along.

The fact that he was willing to lie for Dorian wasn’t a problem. She could always tell when John was lying.

And she already knew that Dorian truly couldn’t lie to save his own life.

John was frowning deeply, lines and shadows on his face that hadn’t existed two years ago. “If you were the only human in a place, and everyone else was an MX or a KHN and that was just the normal, and you knew that, had expected that, wouldn’t you still be lonely?”

Sandra sighed. “You need to stop pretending to be inarticulate so often John. Eventually more than two people here are going to have to know you have a real brain about more than crime patterns.”

“Two? I’m slipping,” he said and smiled for her.

“Hmpf. Somehow Dorian doesn’t think you’re stupid.”

But John didn’t laugh or awkwardly praise himself or pretend he didn’t care what Dorian thought about him. He just turned his empty glass between his fingers.

“I probably am dumber now than I was before the coma,” he said, and it had that same horrified edge to it as when he’d told her he thought everyone here still blamed him for the eleven who died.

She gently tugged the empty glass out of his hand. “I’ll believe that when I see it. Go home John.”

He waved back at her outside her door with a tired grin.

She waited until he was out of sight to pour herself another and drop a hand over her eyes.

 

*

 

John knew he wasn’t really _stupid_ or anything.

He wasn’t a great reader, despite his mom having been a lit teacher, but his grades had never been terrible. He knew more mechanics than he pretended he did. He could fix a car or a holo projector or a drone no problem. He could weld. He couldn’t cook or sew anything or program worth a damn, but neither could a lot of people. He could play guitar alright. He didn’t kill his houseplants. He’d been good at soccer and Ultimate Frisbee and _great_ at American football. It let him outrun his peers and outshoot everyone but Connor and sometimes Sandra.

He’d always been stubborn, knew he’d been kind of a nightmare to raise. But it had always made him a strong performer, could always just outlast his competition in the end. Sandra sometimes said he was intuitive, he saw patterns in things apparently other people missed, though it always just seemed obvious to him. He listened to his instincts, even when he didn’t want to, and they never led him wrong.

Until they really, really did.

He’d never suspected Anna for a minute. Not even when she’d vanished. Everyone acted like he should have known somehow, like there was a sign he just hadn’t wanted to see.

He still felt slower, dumber, off balance in more than the obvious way after the coma. They told him it wouldn’t last, his brain would get used to running again, but people had told him a lot of things.

You’ll get used to the leg. I don’t blame you. Therapy will help. You’ll get your life back. It wasn’t your fault. Give it time.

The only thing that had ever gotten him anything back was the damn Recollectionist, and he didn’t dare go back there.

 

*

 

Rudy was building butterflies again.

He did this four days out of every week at a randomized pattern of week placement and time of day, sometimes every other day, sometimes days apart, but always for at least two hours.

But Dorian didn’t actually know this yet, so he watched. He didn’t have much to do. The workday was over. John had gone home. He was probably no longer required to stay on standby in a charger until a more convenient time of day, and it only took him four hours to charge most nights. He’d already looked at all the bins of technological parts, at the layout of the whole building, at every old stained glass window, though the religious scenes and symbolism made no sense to him.

The KHN head he had seen Rudy altering so many times identified itself as Phillip. Phillip was not much of a conversationalist, which had been probable.

So he sat in Rudy’s office chair and turned side to side and watched him solder together butterflies.

Rudy had let him move the charge pod into the second stairwell. Rudy only needed one set of stairs and the upper door in this one did not open. It was dusty and full of strange boxes right now, but all Dorian had to bring with him was two extra shirts.

He had a door that closed. It was a little amazing.

“Their wings are lovely.”

Rudy startled. Perhaps Dorian had been too quiet. “Oh, oh hello Dorian. Do you like them? Really? They’re not at all marketable, too costly to produce, and I salvage most of the materials from hopeless parts so some of the materials are, hm, restricted, so I suppose how much the cost doesn’t actually matter, but they do fly.”

Dorian shrugged, spun Rudy’s chair side to side. “I like green.”

Rudy hummed, make some tweak that made sparks fly. “Hold on There. Make a noise, something short and distinct like a whistle, easy to reproduce.”

Dorian tipped his head a little to the left and after a moment made a sound, somewhere between a tone flutter and a burst of static. The butterfly twitched then beat its wings into flight, turning little circles nearby before fluttering higher.

Rudy grinned. “There. That one will respond only to your voice now. Whatever sound you made will call it and turn it on or off, though they’ll move towards voices in general. It’ll work with any small device charger. Though, I wouldn’t let it sit in your pod too long. Might be too much for it.”

Dorian watched it wheel around above him, wings tinted warmer from the reflections off the yellow glass. “Thank you.”

“No trouble at all. People don’t always appreciate them. Suppose it is an odd hobby.” Rudy had already picked up a new butterfly to work on, orange this time. “What have you been up to anyway?”

Dorian shrugged. Saying nothing was frequently viewed as evasive behavior.

“Don’t suppose there’s really much for you to do just now. Could always watch TV like the rest of us. Mind you stay out of my tablets and so on. Some of them are… never mind. There’s a monitor over behind that cold cabinet if you need it. Or want it. I must admit I could stand to refresh my memory on your optics.”

Dorian did a quick Vifi search later that night and watched the remaining footage from an ancient movie called The Mechanical Man.

It was incredibly confusing.

 

*

 

John could reluctantly admit that Dorian was good company even outside work, out at the small Koln neighborhood restaurants he preferred, or riding in the car, or loitering with some facsimile of glee outside John’s stupid anger class.

Dorian folded napkins into precisely tinier and tinier triangles while he sat, was _great_ at inappropriate people watching, let John bounce cold case theories off him long after even Sandra would have begged him to shut up or pick another topic.

And once John had gotten him to admit he could technically eat something if he wanted to, it could be _hilarious_. He’d had to explain about biting through things with your front teeth and fix Dorian’s grip on the chopsticks, but John had eventually gotten him to try tofu dumplings and fried tempeh and cream cheese wontons and the sticky mango rice he sometimes got for breakfast. Dorian refused to try meat, which wasn’t fair after the fucking slug, but his reaction to the spicy rice dumpling from John’s tteokbokki had almost made up for it.

They still weren’t clear on what Dorian actually tasted compared to humans, because it definitely wasn’t the same. The face he’d made at hot sauce was almost as funny as the flinch when the one sip of beer had fizzed in his mouth. Something about sour flavors didn’t translate at all. He didn’t even like chocolate.

John had gotten used to dragging Dorian all over the city with him for no good reason after just two months.

But Dorian _really_ wasn’t good to have around when John wanted to be drunk, tended to ask his usual inappropriate questions, but drunk he’d end up answering in way, way too much detail. John knew from experience he was a talkative drunk if he wasn’t alone.

Unfortunately, at the point he’d first considered all this he was already trashed.

Dorian slipped John’s bit stick out of his pocket along with his keys while John blinked at the stereo system in the corner. Something smooth and jazzy was playing. Dorian hadn’t bothered to try and identify it, busy paying for John’s last drink and figuring out the best path from here to the car.

“Can you keep a secret?” John murmured near the side of his head while Dorian tugged him around someone’s kicked out chair. They weren’t at McQuaid’s. John had driven out to the northeast neighborhoods near the wall he seemed to have a preference for.

“Sure John. What would you like to tell me?”

“Sandra did ballet, when she was a teenager, to music like this. She, she taught me how not to, uh fall over when fancy music was on. Don’t tell anybody.”

Dorian smiled. “Of course not. You should take me somewhere with dancing sometime. I’ve never danced. It looks fun.”

“I bet you’ll suck.”

“I appreciate how you’re always so polite to everyone John.” Dorian finally pulled the seatbelt out of John’s hands and fastened it himself. John’s breath was damp against his skin. When Dorian breathed it was always perfectly dry.

“Nah, I mean, dancing’s an animal thing. Not that it’s just for fucking, ‘s art too, but its organic, more than just the music. Lots of things do music. Don’t know what it’ll do for you.”

“I am constantly amazed at how your brain functions,” Dorian said eventually with complete honesty.

John blinked slowly. “Ok.”

Dorian had already pulled out of the bar’s tiny lot when John said, “What, are you driving? You’re not driving.”

“Yeah I am man. You are seriously drunk right now.”

“No I’m not,” he mumbled with his eyes closed, leaning back against the seat.

“Sure John.”

“Well what do I do?”

“Sit there please.”

John was quiet until they were almost to the Leon Bridge, though Dorian could tell he hadn’t fallen asleep. “You sing to me. I can sing.”

Dorian bit down on his lip not to laugh. He wasn’t exactly sure where he’d picked up that habit. It didn’t hurt or sting, but the pressure input and the motions of the action served to distract him from immediate emotional input.

“I’ll listen if you want to sing.”

John grinned and slurred through the chorus of a song Dorian identified as Mr. Roboto.

“Cute John. I wonder why more people aren’t flocking to your magnetic charm. There’s only so much I can do to your dating profile.”

“Do magnets stick to you?”

“No. Why would they? I have skin.”

“Hmpf.”

John stayed quiet again, staring out the window the way Dorian always did, even though he got to see it almost every day.

He started singing again on the road to his home. It took Dorian extra processing time to identify the old song, as John had changed the name from Maggie May to Anna.

_Oh, Annie, I wish I'd never seen your face_

_You made a first-class fool out of me_

_But I'm as blind as a fool can be_

Dorian stayed silent.

John shuffled inside the building without assistance, though Dorian stayed close and followed him upstairs where he immediately flopped down on his bed already half asleep.

Dorian filled a glass with fresh water, moved the first crutch he’d found near Johns bed, though it was likely he used some other method to locomote to the charger for his leg by the window. At some point John had squirmed out of his clothing except for the undershirt and boxers and jewelry.  

Dorian checked again that his BAC was safe and hovered a hand over John’s right ankle “John, your legs at 12%. Let me set it up to charge for you.”

But John made a terrible little sound when Dorian laid a hand on his thigh, terrible enough that he recoiled without any conscious input, something critical flipping hard inside his torso.

“Did I hurt you John?”

It hadn’t occurred to him not to touch John’s limbs, or that this one would be different. People rarely touched Dorian, but all the areas were treated the same.

John was staring at him, but not in a way that suggested he understood Dorian was there. “Gross. I don’t want anyone to touch it. I don’t ever want to touch it.”

It was like the leg wasn’t his anymore simply because it was too short now, like the synthetic leg wasn’t his even though it was customized for his height and size and no one else could possibly make use of it. This was one of the few things about humans Dorian knew he could never hope to really understand. He knew he’d had limbs replaced more than once from his record, but it wasn’t the same.

“It doesn’t bother me.”

“No.”

“John you shouldn’t sleep in the leg, especially with it low on charge. Your thigh needs to rest.”

“No.”

“I won’t touch you. Let me put it in the charger. You’re mostly asleep already man.”

It took John more than one attempt to release the electronic hookup and untwist the physical latch, hands clumsy with drunkenness and exhaustion.

The leg was lighter in Dorian’s hands than he had thought, the joints well lubricated now, the coding up to date. It beeped once when the charge seal activated.

John pulled the sheet loose from the mattress and draped it over himself, using his right thigh to roll over onto his left side.

The physical end of the limb itself didn’t seem to cause any pain. It was something else about it that upset John.

He was asleep already, still and quiet. He wasn’t dreaming. He appeared to be warm enough. Dorian wanted to touch John’s messy hair so badly his fingers lit to the tips and twitched forwards.

But he didn’t.

Dorian let himself out, nudged the house system to lock the doors behind him. The house system identified itself as Gopher for some reason, even though it didn’t have a real concept of itself. He wondered why John called it that.

The darkness of the night didn’t affect his vision capabilities. Everything stayed differentiated by color, though more muted, and kept the same level of detail. But the trees looked different as he walked down the hill. The sky seemed lower like this, closer.

He jumped onto the back of a shipping truck that had slowed in a zone with no cameras, climbed to the top and lay down on his back with his hand clamped around an errant strap. He rode over the bridge watching the green bands of the bridge scroll by, the dark grey and orange wisps of clouds.

The air was cold tonight. He couldn’t become cold, but he could sense it. It felt wispy across his skin.

He leapt off the side when the truck slowed to turn, walked five empty blocks until a trash retrieval truck stopped along its route. It was manned by a simple refurbished SV3, a flat metal face and two round black eyes that blinked infrequently. It wouldn’t notice him riding on the back of the truck.

The clouds were mostly purple and orange in the city lights and it was quiet with the trains stopped for the night. He heard two cats yowling behind a small apartment building. The traffic drones seemed to fly slower. Perhaps they actually did. A bright blue ad for some human grooming product flared and made the trash truck look as though it could be underwater.

He dropped off the back of the truck only four blocks from the lab, told the door to let him in, pulled off his boots and changed his shirt and slept.

John actually called him in the morning, not sounding half as hungover as Dorian would have suspected. He still didn’t bother to say hi.

“Did you drive me home last night?”

“Yeah. You’re welcome.”

“Did I uh, try and sing?”

“You actually have a nice voice John.”

Dorian waited patiently through a few moments of quiet, then, “Did you seriously carry me to bed?!”

He actually hadn’t, but if John misremembered that he wasn’t going to correct him. “Luckily you’re not that heavy to me man.” And he wouldn’t be if Dorian ever got the opportunity to pick him up. John was tall and the frame of his bones was sturdy, but his limbs were slender.  The whole idea of it was enjoyable for some reason.

“None of this _ever happened_.”

“Sure man.”

John hung up on him without another sound. Dorian found he was smiling.

Rudy glanced up from Phillip after a minute. “Wait, what time did you get in last night?”

“Late. John needed me to drive him home.”

“How’d you get back here? You didn’t walk did you? That would’ve taken hours. You could get hit by a truck or something, and let me tell you that is a mess to repair.”

“I got a ride?” It was technically true, but he knew the vocal tone had been off.

Rudy didn’t notice. “Oh, ok. You know you can always call yourself a cab. I don’t mind paying when you get here. If I’m in. Or get John to pay, only fair really. Or I keep a spare bit stick in one of these drawers here…”

He paused and they both glanced around the lab. Rudy had approximately 37 drawers full of small technology.

“Well, you could probably find it if you had to.”

“Dumbass,” said Phillip.

 

*

 

“What do you _do_?” Dorian said while they practically crawled down Blot Avenue in the lunch hour traffic.

“Huh? We’re detectives.”

“When you masturbate, what is it you actually do? I think I must be doing something wrong.”

John choked on his coffee.

Dorian plucked the cup out of his hand while he coughed, placed it neatly back in the holder. John pulled into some unidentified lot and parked the car.

“I thought it would be a simple question? I know you…”

“Just, stop. Stop there. I thought we’d worked out the normal boundaries thing!”

“It’s a normal behavior?”

John looked and Dorian looked back at him way too calmly.

“Ugh. I can’t look at you and have this conversation.”

John stared determinedly out through the windshield.

“It’s just, I feel like I _used_ to know what worked,” Dorian said quietly after a few minutes, something a little sad or bitter in his voice.

“That’s… that sucks man. That isn’t right.” John knew Dorian was missing a bunch of memories, had never even been able to get ahold of a summary. But that could be somewhat justified by sensitive investigations, people’s privacy, court cases that got ugly, that kind of thing.

Maybe.

This wasn’t that. This was personal knowledge, something that should be private, inherent. Losing it was wrong and they both knew it.

“Oh yeah? Tell me about it man.”

John watched the traffic go by. Dorian was completely silent and still, a stray disco light spinning along his face.

“You could, let me watch you?”

“No! No way. That is not an ok thing to ask. Don’t ask anybody that. Ever. And can’t you download porn right into your brain off Vifi?”

“Lots. It isn’t helping.” 

John groaned, covered his eyes with a hand pretending it might help. “Look uh, Dee, not all of that stuff is created equal. You want the slightly more amateurish stuff, a bit less polished a bit more realistic. You’ll know it when you see it.”

“It isn’t answering my _questions_ John.”

“What, do you need a labeled diagram? Maybe try some surgical videos next.”

“That is disgusting man. What is wrong with you.”

John snorted. “Lots. Haven’t you heard?”

Dorian glared.

“Seriously, you can’t possibly need me to spell it out.” He gestured with one hand and pointedly stared back out his window.

“Yeah, I think I figured out the put one of my hands on my penis part just fine on my own, thanks,” with that damn tone that let you know just how much of an idiot he thought you were.

“Gah! Do you have to just _say_ stuff like that?!”

Dorian shrugged, completely unapologetic as usual. “So what do you think about?”

John blinked a few times. “…sexy stuff?”

“No, that’s not even the right question. _How_ do you think about it? What does your brain do, during?”

“Mostly it shuts up.”

Dorian thunked his head back against the seat with an, “urngh,” and that was real disgust, it had that weird oscillation underneath.

“No, no I’m being serious. If you’re overthinking it, or worried about something else, like getting caught or work and you can’t let yourself focus in on how it feels, it won’t work. Sometimes it might anyway, but it won’t be half as good as if you could just think about what you’re actually doing.”

Dorian was frowning a little. “Try to focus only on the immediate sensory input.”

“Yeah. That.”

“I should probably shut down more of my analysis subroutines,” Dorian said almost to himself, like there was something disappointing about that.

“Yeah, you do that. Christ, how is it only Tuesday.”

They were back in traffic on the way to do some _actual_ work before Dorian spoke again.

“Is sex the same?”

“No. It’s different.” John had very carefully never thought about Dorian and either of them actually having sex with someone at the same time.

“How?” he asked, with complete, genuine innocence and curiosity.

John _hated_ it.

“Just is. We never discussed this. Understand?”

“Alright. The number of conversations we have not had has now reached 73. Do you think we should observe the occasion of 75? That is frequently considered an important number.”

“Sure. Why the hell not. We’ll go get wontons.”

 

*

 

“This case really bothered John,” Dorian said.

Rudy was doing the kind of work he tended to get lost in, assembly line style prep of upgrades for HNA processors that all the MX’s were due for over the next two weeks. He’d been humming to himself and working on them when Dorian got here three hours ago.

Rudy was still humming and assembling HNA processor upgrades.

Eventually Dorian had sat down in Rudy’s empty chair and watched. There was nothing else for him to do. Rudy didn’t need any help. The processors were small and required few tools. Phillip the KHN head occasionally informed Rudy his hair looked stupid after Rudy had absently said thank you the first time.

“Well I imagine some of it may have hit too close to home. Disfigurement, or what people might view as disfigurement. Feeling unlovable.”

Unlovable had somehow become an inaccurate word.

“Do you think John is really still that repulsed by his synthetic leg?” Dorian had thought he was getting used to the limb. The calibration hadn’t failed in two months. John rubbed oil into the joints on a regular basis, enough that Dorian could always smell the traces.

It made him happy, to know he had helped.

“Hm, probably on some level. It wouldn’t just be about the prosthetic of course, but well, he’s definitely not fond of the thing. It’s not like it’s the best model either, just the best the department was willing to pitch in for. The hub’s one of the best though, Captain Maldonado asked me about it before, well, you know. There’re some limb designs now with increased sensory feedback capabilities, though I’m not sure that would be an improvement in your line of work, amount of time you both spend injured. You know there was a new study over in Xi’an, a few months back. They’re really upping the percentage of sensory perception in synthetic skin compared to the amounts of materials needed. I was looking at a few of the variations they tried and…”

Dorian let Rudy meander into a few new subjects while he tucked away a new mental note, a much more literal process for him than the origins of the human phrase.

“Right. Then there’s the sense of betrayal involved, a lover’s betrayal too, that’s nasty stuff. No one had a clue at first, I mean, no one suspected. About Anna. It was all over the department. People thought something had happened to her, or she assumed John was going to die and left, and it _was_ touch and go that first week as I understand it, or she just didn’t want to deal with someone that injured and hid the running off elsewhere part out of shame, would hardly be the first person. Suspicions didn’t come until much later, but of course, no one could ever prove anything.”

“I see.” Dorian was pretty sure he didn’t see. Nothing about the person called Anna, whose name John never said, made any sense.

Dorian didn’t mind living with Rudy as much as he’d thought he would at first, when he’d still been thinking on an idle subroutine of something like a tiny basement apartment where no one would come looking at him, all quiet and peaceful. He didn’t need much space. Just some privacy.

Living with Rudy was not quiet or peaceful. But Rudy had let him take over the entire second stairwell with doors that closed and a window that could be propped open and didn’t care when he went out for walks.

Dorian had decided he wasn’t still angry about the brain cable incident, about the snooping, especially knowing the over familiarity came from somewhere specific. He’d still like those memories back though. (Yodeling?)

“Rudy, you need to eat something within the next hour.”

“Hm? No, I couldn’t possibly. Quite busy here.”

“Your hands will start shaking too badly to work within 45 minutes.”

Rudy blinked and seemed to notice it was dark outside. “Oh. Bugger. I don’t have anything in and I really want to finish this in one go. Flows better you know. Going to catch up on sleep this weekend. But I can hardly sleep in the middle of something like this. No, couldn’t possibly go home now.”

Dorian smiled when Phillip rolled his pale eyes. “Would you like me to go and pick up your usual?”

“Oh, yes I suppose that would work. Do you mind?”

“Of course not.” He’d already placed the order. “I’ll be back in 30 minutes,” he said, but Rudy was already completely refocused on the next chip in line.

Dorian always changed his clothes before he went out off shift.

It was still new to have the option to change, but he’d known for a while the uniform made him too noticeable to do things like go sit in the park or pick up dinner for Rudy and that he would need other clothes in order to accomplish those tasks.

Dorian had two other shirts now and a jacket.

The jacket had been Rudy’s first, but it had been ordered in too large a size and never worn. It was a dark grey knit with two black buttons and the kind of nice collar that laid down flat. Rudy called it an informal blazer because Rudy knew about clothes. And once Rudy had offered him the use of the jacket after Dorian found it in a crate of miniature fan blades, they had discussed shirts, because it was apparently wrong to wear a standard issue uniform shirt with a blazer even if it was informal, and Rudy had ended up helping Dorian order two new shirts from an online store far too late that night and sleeping on the cot in the back room near Phillip.

“I never thought about it, the uniform standing out, but I suppose I’m quite used to you, and most people don’t appreciate the finer points of men’s fashion anyway. John for example has quite happily worn the same three colors every day for the last five years far as I can tell.”

Dorian had noticed that when he looked through John’s closets, that there wasn’t anything besides grey, dark green, blue, or black. The jacket he seemed to favor, with the orange lining, appeared to be an outlier. John wore jewelry though, wood and stone beads, braided fibers, straps of leather, metal chains and pendants. Certain items he wore constantly and others were changed at random.

It was an interesting habit.

Dorian had the grey jacket and a long sleeved, green knit shirt and a light blue shirt that buttoned that Rudy had said would suit him. He put on the blue shirt. His pants and boots were solid black. They weren’t at all noticeable without the DRN shirt and the blue police jacket.

It was a nice evening. Not too cold for humans to be out walking together, and it was only 2.5 blocks to the café.

Bots weren’t technically allowed to buy things on an owner’s behalf, but people still did it constantly and everyone went along with it for the most part. Who would think a bot could ever think to steal money? Some places wouldn’t take an order from a bot, or even had _no bots inside_ signs on the doors, but the late night café Rudy got baked potatoes from didn’t mind. Dorian had never had any money himself, but Rudy never hesitated tossing over his secondary bit stick on these occasions, even knowing just how capable Dorian really was.

Judy, who worked in the evenings at the café, did not know. She did not know his name or his real profession and had never asked, but she did seem to think Rudy was the type of person who might acquire a home assistance bot.

“Hey there babydoll. That order’s not ready quite yet. You wait right over there and I’ll let you know when it’s done.”

Home Personal Assistance models, HPA, or hapless like many people called them, were simple machines that performed a limited amount of assistance tasks, mainly for the elderly or nervous or somewhat immobile. They were from an entirely different robotics company from him or the MXs, one that specialized in certain service models and HPAs and never contracted with the police. None of them looked remotely like Dorian, with their black irises and stiff, pleasant faces, but it wasn’t unheard of for one to fetch an order of food.

And Judy was always very sweet towards him, and seemed to be that way towards all the bots who ended up in here, so he’d found he didn’t mind the assumption, condescending as it probably was. But he seemed to be the only one she called babydoll.

After four minutes she waved him over, placed the bag with Rudy’s potato carefully in his hands.

“Thank you Judy,” he said and smiled, the careful one without too many teeth.

She patted his wrist without noticing it was partially armored. “You have a good walk home babydoll. Be careful.”

Walking back to Rudy’s lab he saw a young female couple walking a tiny fluffy dog, kept his left hand above average temperature to keep the potato from going cold, and started searching online for upcoming, new models of high impact prosthetic legs.

 

*

 

John was _definitely_ dumber since the coma.

It had been a gut punch, like getting hit with a crowbar or something, a thump to the skull, hearing _those words_ come out of _Dorian’s_ mouth. 

Of course Dorian wasn’t going to _replace_ Pelham. Pelham was Pelham and Dorian was Dorian. But that wasn’t what Dorian had been saying; Dorian had been saying the kind of shit John had thought the guy didn’t even believe in, like their relationship was fundamentally _less_ because Dorian was an android.

And John hadn’t believed that or given it any thought for a long time now.

He had at first, had made no secret about that. Dorian was a bot, and maybe he’d quickly proven he was intelligent and useful and could keep up on the job in all the ways John needed, good enough to fade that initial resentment within a day for fucks sake, but however smart and empathetic he was, he was a bot not a person. They weren’t friends.

John remembered being so sure of this; he just didn’t really remember when it had stopped.

Because it had stopped, a long time ago.

Except Dorian somehow didn’t seem to know that.

And underneath everything still warm and stunned about the leg and the satisfaction of finally laying his Dad’s last case to rest and the aches from another too long week, John hadn’t expected that to hurt so much.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That concludes the season one material! Chapter two will move into more uncharted territory and should be up well before Christmas. (Though, if all the chapters turn out as long as this one, yikes somebody help me.) Please let me know what you all think so far! If you notice any typos or inconsistencies please let me know about that too. 
> 
> Also, I am on tumblr over [here](http://meanderings0ul.tumblr.com). It's a multifandom, multishipping hot mess, but I'm always up to talk about anything.
> 
> Thanks for reading :)


	2. 0010

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long time no update! Author is very sorry about their complete inability to work on one fandom for more than three months at a time. Have 17,000 words to make up for it. In this chapter we move to after the point where the show ended. John and Dorian are becoming used to both each other and the daily grind. I drop my first few hints of plot here as well. Thank you everyone who left such lovely comments on chapter 0001. They are adored.
> 
> Enjoy :)

 

That weekend after they’d apprehended the real Straw Man, Dorian moved his charging pod to top of stairs in the tower that was now mostly his, blocking the upstairs door even though it had been locked the whole time he’d lived here. It hadn’t had a key when Rudy bought the old church in foreclosure and he’d never machined himself a new one.

He wasn’t still angry with Rudy for moving him while he was asleep. He’d decided that and he meant it. But with the pod up two flights of stairs, nothing would be able to move him while he slept. Rudy’s winch system only covered the ground floor, an approaching bot would ping him by default, and he was too heavy for Rudy or John to carry.

He rewired the pod into the lab power system by memory since the full schematics were still classified. He’d watched how Rudy had set it up the first time. It should be right. If not, he would know sooner rather than later.

Dorian was able to keep the pod here at a 45o degree angle instead of the 10o the MXs used. It hadn’t changed his sleep charge quality of course. Once he was in suppressed awareness he was out, except for hazy impressions of his surroundings that he knew were unlike human dreams. But it was much more comfortable when he was sluggish or waking up to be able to lean.

Sunday he cleaned throughout the lab, removing obviously hazardous wastes and picking mechanical refuse from the floor and running a dust collector back and forth. Dorian didn’t like to be dirty and Rudy sneezed less when the lab was clean, though he didn’t seem to have noticed Dorian cleaned it now. He activated all the butterflies that were operational until a small cloud of them was flying throughout the upper story, swirling towards him whenever he hummed or made too loud a clang. Phillip was asleep for the weekend again, tied into some analysis Rudy was running.

Dorian acquired a spare length of pipe from the upstairs floor and fastened it up in his tower to lay his clothes over, so they didn’t have to lie on a stack of empty crates anymore.

Darren pinged him about a frustrated human who had attempted to shake a malfunctioning holographic diagnostics interface, even though there was nothing to grasp. They both thought it was very funny. Dorian sent him a capture of the butterflies, then shut them all down so he could open an upstairs window and watch people go by.

John sent him a text that evening. He did most weekends they didn’t see each other. It had been two weekends since Dorian had last rode home with him to sit on the patio or play old video games. They were halfway through Portal now. He opened the ping with a blink.

_[JK] - i went jogging outside_

John hadn’t willingly run outside since the raid. Dorian knew this. Previously it had been a regular habit for him to run up and down the hills near his place. But John had never been comfortable enough with his prosthetic to run anywhere but on a machine inside his home.

He must have run with the new leg. He must like it.

_DRN 0167 - I’m very happy for you._

And he was, had to sit down on the stair step near the little stained glass window and just bask in it for a while.

He watched _THX 1138_ once it was late and there were no more people to watch out the windows. The androids reminded him somewhat of the MXs, if the MXs were slow and stupid.

There was still nothing about the movie that was particularly helpful.

He pulled up _Star Wars_ next.

 

*

 

They’d gotten a tip off after and a few complaints about small drug deals going down in the marina neighborhood main shopping drag, blatantly visible during the afternoon rush, getting all the what is the world coming to reactions you’d expect. Sandra had decided they were going to take it seriously, so they’d been pretending to shop or doing backlogged paperwork at too small restaurant tables all damn day.

Dorian had been excited about getting to be in plainclothes for work, like pretending to be boring people doing boring shit was the best thing ever.

John had had to fill out a fucking form for Dorian to be working and out of uniform, like putting the guy in a different t-shirt made him not a detective anymore. He’d figured they’d have to go pick up something for Dorian to actually wear, but that wasn’t the case. Turned out Dorian had already acquired some other clothes somehow, probably Rudy, which was a good thing, a normal thing, he’d just never thought of it before.

Something about the way Dorian had said _I have a shirt_ had really pissed John off and he still wasn’t sure why.

John put on a few more bracelets the next morning, a shirt with actual buttons under the nicer leather jacket, grabbed some sunglasses and tried to look like someone who had ever gone on a shopping trip on purpose in his entire life. He should have sent Valerie with Dorian instead. They probably would have had a great time.

Somehow it was weird, really weird, seeing him out of uniform. John hadn’t realized that morning that the guy leaning against the sunny brick wall of the lab was even _Dorian_ until he’d moved towards the car. The hair and the black pants and the heavy boots were all normal, but he had a thin, green sweater on, the nice kind, that rolled back on itself at the edges and had the kind of loose neckline that showed a bit of perfectly smooth collarbone.

Of course, that collarbone was a molded piece of grade 5 titanium that carried the increased weight of the armored chest plate below it. John had still almost frozen up on the sidewalk when he’d clapped a hand between Dorian’s shoulders to steer him away from what was obviously a women’s lingerie store, and felt the slide of soft fabric over skin instead of the usual stiff jacket.

He was sitting different today too, looser maybe, an elbow draped back over the top of his chair, chin at an imprecise angle, their one shopping bag between his feet. Despite the gleefully rapt expression John hadn’t seen a hint of excitable blue lights all day, even when Dorian had touched every single pair of jeans in that stupid store.

Not that he missed it or anything.

“I know how to hide it without actually losing signal,” Dorian had said hesitantly, when John asked if he needed to bring along back up radios for them, like maybe it wasn’t something he was allowed to do.

Like John had ever given a crap if Dorian did stuff he wasn’t allowed to do. Dorian was the one who kept track of that stuff. John could barely keep himself from getting fired.

They’d parked a few blocks away and walked, well, John mostly just walked, Dorian scanned around them for drug traces and facial matches of anyone with dealing priors. John just tried to look normal.

They paced out the whole five block center looking for traces or drug paraphernalia, subtly flashed a badge to a few store managers who looked like they’d worked in the area for a while, none of whom had seen shit. Dorian even pulled an old SV3 aside that had been watering planters to check its few memories. They hid from the lunch rush outside a pizza place. Dorian watched the crowd happily and refused to try the cheese. John got dragged through a candy store when Dorian stopped and walked inside one without so much as making a sound.

They’d been pretending to do work outside this corner coffee shop for over an hour now.

“Any sign of any drugs in the area?” John asked quietly.

“Nope.”

“Anybody come through with drug related priors?”

“Still no.”

John tossed his stylus down on the table in disgust. “I can’t believe we just wasted an entire day for those stupid tip offs.”

But Dorian obviously wasn’t bored. Or chilly now that the sun was getting low. His feet weren’t tired from dodging oblivious people on the sidewalk. He’d finished all his reports already. Dorian was watching a dad chase a toddler chasing one of those little roll-along toys that you were supposed to hold the leash for. 

“Hey,” John tossed his credit chip across the table and Dorian caught it easily.  “Could you go get me a coffee while I finish this and then we’ll call it a day.”

Dorian nodded, still looking peaceful and sunlit in a way John was trying not to look at directly. John only looked up from the additional, even more descriptive follow up report over the Straw Man when he heard a crinkling sound.

Dorian had carried the damn shopping bag inside with him. For fucks sake. It was only a stupid pair of jeans. There was no reason for the guy to not have an extra pair of pants. It wasn’t any big deal. They’d been in the store asking questions anyway.

John hummed thanks without looking up some time later when Dorian set a composite cup down in front of him with a plip. If he’d looked up he’d have noticed the expectant look on the guy’s face. Dorian still couldn’t lie worth a damn.

Dorian laughed loud when John recoiled at the first sip.

“Ughh! What the hell did you do?!”

“I got you coffee. I thought the extra sugar might help your personality.”

“Ha ha. You ass. Shit. What _is_ this?” John said, hesitantly taking another sip.

“It’s a praline latte. It is a special today. I thought pralines were a kind of cookie, but they didn’t know why it was a latte now when I asked inside.”

“I honestly have no idea Dee.” John took another drink, grimaced at the heat as much as the weird, sweet flavor, and set it down on the stupid little table with the lid pulled off.

Dorian reached over and prodded at the pile of white foam on top of the drink curiously.

“Can you not poke my food?” John snapped, but even he knew he didn’t actually care and hadn’t managed to sound pissy about it at all. “What a useless fricken day.” Someone panicky had probably seen a few people playing that latest bestiary game, the kind with coordinates and pick up point generators and stuff you could trade hand to hand. He’d used to play that kind of stuff as a kid.

If Sandra’d done this on purpose she was gonna _pay_. He’d buy Tapper cheese and switch out all her coffee for decaf.

Dorian peered at the blob of fluff on his fingertip before he licked it.

John stared. And then absolutely did not stare. 

Dorian wriggled his lower jaw. “How is that made? The edible foam? I saw the steam machine inside, but this isn’t the texture I expected.”

“It’s froth. You get milk froth on top of a latte. I have no idea how that works. Why didn’t you ask them?”

“They were still giving me a weird look after I asked about pralines. I didn’t want to cause any incident.”

“Hmpf.” Despite himself John ended up drinking the whole stupid thing while he finished the report. Then he made up some excuse to go back inside and make Dorian wait. There was a puppy across the street, so it wasn’t that hard.

The café wasn’t empty inside, two girls doing schoolwork in the left corner, some older guy half asleep on the right side and one bored kid behind the counter.

“Hey, do you froth almond milk here? And isn’t that uh, vanilla syrup? Can I just get a cup of flavored foam, whatever you charge for that. My buddy over there likes the texture.”

“The old bot?” the dumbass kid said.

John stopped trying to make his face look like a normal, functioning human so he probably looked more terrifying than he meant to. “Problem?”

“Nope,” the kid said and grabbed a cup.

John all but tossed it at Dorian once they were walking back to the car. “Here. Knock yourself out.”

Dorian obviously smelled what it was before he even yanked the lid off and dug in with the spoon John had grabbed him. He didn’t make any breath sounds or move his stupidly perfect nose when he smelled things, but John had somehow learned to tell a while ago.

“Hmmmm. It’s so, crisp, but it’s still really soft? Why would someone think to make this?”

“Who cares? Don’t play with it.” Dorian was obviously mushing the fluff around in his mouth again.

“Does it bother you when I play with it John?”

John couldn’t even react for a moment, not even blinking, enough time for Dorian to start smirking, slow and creeping.

John pointed menacingly even though he knew it was useless when directed at Dorian. “Don’t you even try and pretend you didn’t know _exactly_ how that was going to sound before you said it. Don’t even try.”

Dorian ate a big spoonful of his useless non-drink and tried to look innocent, the wide, big blue eyed look that made John want to do stupid things.

John shook his head in disgust and unlocked the car. “I can’t believe _anyone_ falls for your shit buddy.”

 

*

 

Valerie was twelve before she really understood that she was a Chrome and other people were not.

It wasn’t like things were now, not at first. She’d gone to a regular private school, not an academy that catered to Chromes’ rapid learning abilities and near-eidetic memories. Private lessons in Cantonese and German, piano and ballet had kept her busy enough. She played with her dog and went along to big, fancy dinners between Momma and Daddy and people talked about Chromes and how pretty she was and asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up and Daddy had always answered for her and absolutely none of it had seemed out of the ordinary to her at all.

She often read under her desk at school, archaeology, Ruby and Python, and princesses out on adventures.

Valerie had had lots of friends. Some of her friends only talked to each other. Some of them wouldn’t talk to her in front of anyone else. Some of them weren’t allowed to invite her over. She wasn’t sure why. But that was ok. People were different for all different reasons, everyone knew that, and it wasn’t something Valerie worried about.

Valerie wrote her first software script at ten, a scan bot for making camera captures in phone vids. It didn’t seem like a big deal, like something that was odd or impressive for a ten year old, so she didn’t bother to tell anyone, set it up as an online download with a tip-jar for donations, spent all the money on candy and dog treats.

Nobody noticed.

The oldest Chromes were only four years older than her. That was when the process had first hit the open market. It was incredibly expensive at first, poorly understood. Previous versions had been so much simpler, only covering a handful of diseases. When it became clear it worked her parents had hired a surrogate and had Valerie Chromed.

She didn’t understand what all that meant until later.

Her teeth grew in perfectly straight. She never had acne. She grew at an even pace, no growth spurts or awkward phases, where hands and feet grew too fast for her long limbs. She didn’t have any stretch marks, or little childhood scars. Her hair grew thick and glossy smooth. She could run for miles without training or getting tired. Her body stayed lean, smooth muscle without any effort. When she sang the pitch was always perfect.

She was third in their class and the MVP of their girls’ soccer team and half her friends wouldn’t talk to her anymore.

The other half had… changed.

The other Chromes, the people supposedly more like her, seemed to think they weren’t quite people, like they were better because they were smart, because they could try as many cigarettes and drink as much underage as they wanted without wheezing or getting addicted. Some of them turned in the minimum amounts of classwork because they knew they could get perfect scores on all the exams. Others maintained 6.0 averages. Most of them didn’t try to talk to anyone other than other Chromes anymore.

Valerie didn’t feel any different from anyone else. But. The other Chromes didn’t want to hear that.

By the time she graduated high school none of her friends would talk to her anymore.

Her undergraduate experience was about the same. Chromes were starting to be noticed, showing up in noteworthy business deals and on all kinds of patents and running for key offices. She avoided all of them, studied programming and sociology and ran slow when she played intramural soccer. Chromes were also doing more and more modeling, so one night after a call from her parents, asking her which of the top companies in the city she was planning to work for, she threw every high-brand item she owned into a trash bin and left it out at a donation point.

Even dressing aggressively basic, in plain textures and colors, people still noticed _what_ she was first, sometimes before they even knew her name.

Valerie woke up one day at 21 with two degrees, a small handful of friends that were close but not close enough to confide in, two distant parents still waiting to see how their darling _investment_ would pay off and realized she’d never done a single worthwhile thing in her entire life.

She’d already been accepted into her first choice graduate school when she applied to the police academy instead, was admitted only after a call to confirm the application wasn’t in error. Because Chromes just didn’t do those sorts of jobs.

She hadn’t spoken to her parents for longer than five minutes ever since.

Sometimes Valerie thinks she should miss them more, but then she has to wonder what was ever there to miss. They bought a baby more than they had ever just wanted a child and it had never been anything other than obvious.

All that money and time and they didn’t get what they wanted. How dare she not live the kind of life she’d never asked for.

Cybercrime was crucial to the health of the city, so was detective work when the opportunity for that came. It was dangerous and exhausting and never similar enough for her Chromed mind to just learn and be done with it. It was worthwhile.

But somehow, even after helping to carry Vogel’s coffin, it had still never really hit her that she might be one of the ones to die doing this.

It just hadn't clicked, not until she’d woken up tied to a chair in a dead woman’s house and realized Kennex was the only one ruthless enough to perhaps get her out of here if everything good and legal that other people did failed.

 

*

 

Some days Dorian and Rudy barely spoke, when a case was intense or the technician had lots of work to do, and some days they talked for hours.

Sometimes Dorian would go over their conversations later, in his memory, try and find exactly where and how they had switched from something like elbow joint repair to paganism to how to sort laundry.

Just now he wasn’t sure how they’d gotten from traditional holiday desserts to this. He’d have to recollect and watch it later.

Though he never once actually made sense of it when he did.

“Humans continually regard and symbolize the organic process of growth as somehow divine.  Unmonitored organic processes have a high margin of error. If the margin of error is part of the increased value…”

“Oh, but that is completely irrelevant! You know real is about more than how you were made, in my opinion. And it’s not just people like you, or even all the idiotic things people say about Chromes. Humans have been purposefully changing ourselves forever. Historically people would choose who got to reproduce with who because of wealth or beauty or supposed ‘royal blood’. We have more people in the world with blue eyes every year passes because for some reason, universally, as a species we pick blue eyes as more attractive than other options like hazel or brown. Lucky for us two, eh? But seriously, 200 years from now almost everyone alive will be some form of Chrome, whether they went through the process themselves or one or both parents did. I’m sure we’ll have all new problems to make a fuss about by then.”

Something about that had directed Rudy to ask what Dorian had watched recently and the conversation continued, but after that little outburst there had been a lingering data ping to the left of Dorian’s vision. He followed it later that night, out into the vifi clouds and found an old story Rudy must have unconsciously quoted, one about a plush, velveteen rabbit.

He read it quickly and his eyes felt odd again, cold and too slick under the lids, like when he’d found out what John had said about him in his review, or when he remembered being decommissioned.

Dorian believed himself to be alive, believed he had emotions that were more than programmed responses to external stimuli, believed his affection towards Rudy and John was a valid feeling that was his and his alone, same as needing to connect with Darren, same as not wanting to die.

But if he was wrong, how would he know? If none of it was really Real, how could he feel the difference? How could any DRN? When this was the only kind of life they’d ever had?

There could be no comparison. His body would never change. There would be no obvious sign like the little rabbit had. There would be no organic transmutation to mark some limitation reached or surpassed.

Even though that wasn’t something he’d ever wanted, that presumed organic superiority, that messiness, Dorian still wondered about living that form of life constantly.

 

*

 

Dr. Tilden’s office was about the same as always, cramped and cluttered and too brightly lit and not somewhere John wanted to be.

Six more months, two more mandatory sessions, and no more ‘outbursts’ at work and he’d never have to come back.

“It’s been three more months John, eight since you first went back to work. Would you like to start with anything new in your life?”

John shrugged. “Uh, works fine. Not in the middle of anything big except the usual.”

Tilden never asked him to talk more or to put his feeling in specific feelings words or think about his facial expressions or say stupid things to himself in the mirror. Occasionally that made John actually talk to him, which always pissed him off later.

“Dorian, my partner now, picked me out a new leg, got one of our friends to pull some strings. It’s stronger, doesn’t act up near as much. Way more comfortable. I think the, shock absorptions better or something.”

“May I see it?”

“Sure.” John set his right ankle up on his left thigh and tugged his pants up until the hologram showed. “I think it mirrors the other leg better. Skin hologram doesn’t look so awful.”

“Are you sure it really looked that awful before?”

“Hmpf. Yeah, I’m sure.”

There was a loose thread at the bottom of these jeans and he twisted at it. John literally couldn’t remember the last time he’d bought new clothes.

“I don’t dream about it anymore. The fake leg. I used to dream about it a lot. I’d get up in the morning and gimp on over to it and, and I’d reach out to get the leg and my hands would just squish down into it, and it’d be rotten red and charred up like old burger, the kind with maggots falling out, and that would ooze up my arms like it’d infected me somehow. I’d always wake up when it got to my mouth.”

An old clock ticked steadily in the thick quiet. Dr. Tilden was such a fricken cliché guy. But he got points for not reacting to John’s stupid dream. John hadn’t meant to blurt it all out like that. Damn it.

“Were you usually able to go back to sleep after that dream? Or would you have it again if you did?”

“Just once in a night. Eventually I was tired enough to just go back to sleep no matter what.”

“Can I ask, where did your previous leg come from John?”

He shrugged, open handed. “It was just the one they had made at that hospital, the recovery place Sandra got me put into. They had a contract or something with a company.”

“Do you think perhaps, that having this leg come from a source that you don’t resent, that you maybe even trust, is helping you acknowledge your new leg in a healthier way?”

John sat quiet, staring down at his exposed right ankle. The new hologram mirrored the round freckles over from his left ankle exactly the same, but it kept the sickly fakeness away, didn’t look like a plastic doll leg anymore. Or makeup on a corpse leg.

“If I’d put that together sooner I’d have gotten a lot more sleep this last year.” He tapped his thumb against the leg’s outer coating. The texture wasn’t near as good as Dorian’s skin. Some of Vaughn’s patents were still proprietary, even with his company gone. “I mean, I had the money. I could have bought a different leg. I’ve been saving up. Condo’s been paid off for a few years. Hospital bills are locked in, basically no interest, just got to keep paying it off.”

“Is there anything in particular you’re saving for? Perhaps something you’re planning to do? Or a different improvement you’re looking ahead towards?”

Planning for the future was supposed to be one of those signs of being not-crazy. John snorted under his breath. “Not any _thing_. There’s just, an emergency purchase I might need to make at some point. A pricy one.  I’ll have to have enough on hand if I end up needing to do that.”

“It’s alright. I don’t need any details of course. And it can often be hardest to notice the things closest to us in new ways. That’s not strange. We get used to seeing something in our lives, we might not stop to consider whether it’s helping or harming us.”

John huffed quietly. “Fucking tell me about it man.”

“How are you sleeping now? With all these changes. Work has been stable, your social life has increased.”

John wasn’t sure what the guy meant about ‘increased social life’ unless he meant stuff like hanging out in the lab with Dorian and Rudy, or talking through the Knights games with Stahl, or remembering how to really talk to Sandra about stuff that wasn’t work.

“Fine. I get around five hours most nights. If I wake up I try to listen to a book or watch a vid or I text Dorian about something. Usually work or some movie he’s watched. He doesn’t mind, just tells me to shut up if he’s busy you know? Not the kind of guy that holds grudges.”

Dorian didn’t actually tell him to shut up much. The only time John could really think of Rudy had just accidentally set something on fire.

“Is that something you admire about your partner?”

“Maybe.” He didn’t usually think in specific words like that, avoided thinking about what he admired or didn’t admire about Dorian in general.

“Would you feel comfortable with the statement that you are doing better in your everyday life?”

“Yeah. I guess so.”

And the thing was he actually meant it.

 

*

 

Sandra was just coming back into the precinct building from walking Tapper over her lunch hour when her personal phone rang.

“Maldonado.”

Technically it was her personal phone, it was the number her family had, but her personal phone had become less and less personal over time. Only her sisters gave her crap for it anymore.

Dr. Tilden didn’t introduce himself but she recognized his voice. “Who’s Dorian? Sorry. Good afternoon Captain. I’ll tell you who he is; he’s a damned miracle. He _talked_ to me today. All this time and I think this is the first time I’ve actually talked to John Kennex.”

Sandra let herself smile. “Still think he should return to work never?”

“I guess not, though I still have my reservations. I never thought he’d let himself bond with a partner again after blaming himself for Detective Pelham’s death. And I thought MX’s were mandatory now? Didn’t he destroy three of them in the first month at work? That’s all I could get him to talk about the last time he was supposed to come see me.”

“Ah,” she said.

“What? What’d I say?”

Sandra slowed, turned and ducked into a stairwell she knew didn’t pick up audio. “Dorian is a DRN.”

The phone connection stayed silent a few moments. Sandra waited patiently.

“I… never would have suspected that. The way he spoke about him… I never got the impression the DRNs were, quite that capable. Immaturity and instability of the synthetic emotion interface was one of the major problems right? That’s why most major cities have MXs now.”

“Well the DRNs simply didn’t have much time in action, did they? Two years isn’t a lot of time to learn everything humans get more than a decade for.”

“I suppose that’s one perspective. They _were_ an advanced independent learning system. Wow. I would have sworn John was talking about a real person.”

Sandra almost laughed, though it was hardly funny. “I’ll need you to remember you said that to me Dr. Tilden.”

Tilden sighed. “What did I just get myself dragged into Captain?”

“Nothing yet, but you know I like to keep multiple options out on the table.”

“Hm. Do I. You know I only call you as a favor, right? You’re supposed to get my reports next week, along with everyone else I’m obligated to report to in the force.”

“I think you’ve spent enough time with John now to know this is a better arrangement for everyone involved.”

She’d only had to ask twice for a tweak in a report, for the omission of two things she knew she could take care of with some warning and a little time with John, things that would upset others. She hadn’t had to ask for one since John had started working with Dorian.

“Do I ever,” Tilden said.

 

*

 

“You look… happy? Today.”

It was true. Dorian was sort of slumped and loose in the passenger seat, almost a _sprawl_ , shoulders looking more like bones than steel. He’d been humming absently since they’d said good morning, but it was somehow less aggressively tuneless and annoying today.

Dorian grinned at him and John tried not to just smile back. Sitting in the car smiling at Dorian like an idiot wouldn’t lead anywhere good.

“Man, that’s a big feelings word for you, isn’t it? Angry class must have done you some good.”

“You know I haven’t had to go to that in two months. Go on. Spill. New eyeballs hit the market? Got some good dirt on Rudy? What?”

“Remember you asked.”

John grinned out the window. “Sure. I asked. Now spill.”

“I um, figured it out,” Dorian said, grinning absently. He did that sometimes. Like something about the world was really just that awesome.

“Figured it out.”

“You know, what we didn’t talk about three weeks ago.”

It still took John a moment to catch on. “Oh! Oh. Well, uh, good for you.”

“Yeah,” he said, low and _pleased_ and John pretended desperately that hearing Dorian’s voice like that didn’t send a hot chill down his spine.

“If you start trying to tell me details you can ride in the trunk,” he blurted out instead.

Dorian laughed quietly and ignored him.

“How about you man? I don’t suppose you ever dealt with your, problem.”

Figures. Peace and quiet was too much to hope for.

“I don’t have any problems! And that’s still none of your damn business,” John grumbled.

It didn’t mean anything that John’s stupid subconscious had decided it wouldn’t mind if Dorian actually made it his business, that half the time anymore it wasn’t the nightmares waking him up shaken and flushed and sweaty.

But John was ignoring that mess with everything he had.

 

*

 

There’d been a break in at one of the cities several robotics recycling plants, but not the one they contracted with for destroyed MXs, one of the smaller ones.

No one had been inside. A single SV4 had been serving as a security patrol indoors and had been disabled by a parabolic EMP device before anyone came in. There was no memory footage for Dorian to examine. No footage had been recorded by a building without power either.

Three points of entry through shattered windows, none visible from the main road. Broken glass crunched and squeaked against the concrete floor. These people hadn’t cared if everyone knew the place had been turned over after the fact.

John was just waiting to hear from Stahl that there’d been a flash of a white mask on an outdoor surveillance drone. He already knew who’d done this. Had a bad feeling he knew _why_ too.

The company manager hadn’t done anything useful except call the cops this morning when she first got here. Now she was pacing around, muttering about insurance claims and shoving her black hair behind her ears and asking when she’d be able to start cleaning up.

The answer was _still_ not today. It took time to set up a reconstructive DNA scan. Maybe they’d get really lucky and find a trace of someone around the windows.

Dorian hadn’t said two words or looked up since they’d walked in, and John couldn’t blame him. Rudy’s lab was always some unholy cross between a charnel house and fairyland, with all the disembodied limbs in boxes and oversized butterflies, but it wasn’t like _this_.

A pale grey foot had been kicked into a corner with a pile of sandwich wrappers and dust, an arm had obviously pitched off a worktable and been shoved underneath to deal with later. A bucket of various colors and sizes of eyes was at the end of a table, one eye near it on the floor, like someone had tossed from a ways away to score a point and missed.

“Do you know what was stolen yet? They made a real mess of the place,” John said, because this couldn’t be how it was in here all the time. Who’d be able to stand it? There was a bluish stain on the floor near his boot that looked like whatever it was Dorian bled and John swallowed against the instinct to gag.

Ms Smith squinted in confusion before she _laughed_. “Oh, sorry. We’re not too strict about the organization around here as long as everything ends up in the right place. It’s not like anything’s going to get an infection or something.”

John pressed his lips together so he didn’t ask what her _malfunction_ was. “Ok. Can you tell me what was stolen?”

Smith shrugged. “Nothing was stolen.”

John stared, gestured at the nightmarish mess around them. There was a torso on a hook six feet away with a skin tone something like Dorian’s that John was not looking at. “Can you really be sure?”

“Market value of copper is still over five dollars per pound. Platinum is well over one thousand an ounce. Silver, palladium, tritium, and titanium are all high priced metals, tritium in particular. There is an energetic black market for reinforced android limb structures, for prize fighters and unlicensed prosthetics. Learning cores from SV4 and SV3 have significant resale values.”

Dorian recited the information in a completely flat voice, still not looking up from some distant point near the floor.

Smith was peering at Dorian like she’d only just noticed he was there, shoved her hair back again. “Yeah? But they didn’t take anything. Just wrecked the place.”

“They didn’t find whatever they were looking for,” John said, and Dorian nodded in agreement, looking vacantly somewhere around his knees.

John sighed, fished his keys out of his pocket and tossed them at Dorian. They actually thunked against his chest before Dorian reached up to catch them.

“Hey, go start the car, would you?”

Dorian started to open his mouth, probably to argue about crime scene protocol.

“Just go start the damn car Dee.”

Dorian left, shoulders stiff and still looking fixedly about two feet above the floor.

Ms Smith was staring after him like the idea of him walking and talking was still something weird. What a basement dweller.

“How many DRNs are you… processing right now?” InSyndicate had wanted Danica for themselves. Since that had failed, if they wanted their own custom killbot, stealing a DRN body or components that wouldn’t really be missed was a good place to start. MX parts would draw to much attention, same with military androids. 

John knew Dorian had put all that together too.

“None. I haven’t had one of them come through here in years. Those were a popular refurb for a little while there. Buyers snatched ‘em up.”

“Figures,” he grumbled, and on impulse dug behind his badge to pull out a dusty celo card with his personal contact information on it.

“Look, if you have any DRN stuff get brought in, let me know? I have a buyer I know for all that. It'd be a quick sale probably.”

Someday something on Dorian was gonna break that Rudy couldn’t just re-solder or put in a rec order to have machined. The more of it they could already have on hand legally the better. She tucked the celo into a pocket without glancing at it, but at least there was that option in place now.

Dorian had started the car, but he was in the passenger’s seat staring into space without a single disco light running. John had never seen him pass up the opportunity to drive.

“You ok?”

“Did you know you can donate one or all of your vital organs?” Dorian said mechanically, before he giggled and cut himself off with a buzzing click, turning his face away.

Yeah, that was a no.

“You know you’re never going to end up somewhere like that, right? That’s never going to happen.” That should be obvious information, but it seemed like the thing he should probably say.

Dorian tilted his head to one side, stared at him. “John, the list of ways I am likely to be completely incinerated in our line of work only amounts to .09%.”

“What’s that got to do with anything? Look, let’s say we get ourselves blown up, Rudy will still be around. Or, on the off chance Rudy ever has um, descendants, one of them will probably turn out like him, so I guess that’s an option too.”

Dorian was still just frowning at him slightly like John was speaking gibberish.

John growled under his breath, wondering why he ever bothered trying to be comforting or whatever when he knew he was crap at it, and pulled out into the main road.

 

*

 

Dorian wasn’t sure what he thought might happen to him when he died or was decommissioned again, especially if he was fundamentally beyond repair.

John was unlikely to keep his body around if he couldn’t be reactivated; John thought of it as a distinct body too often, rather than one of 50 nearly identical forms, and humans had some strange aversions about death. 

It wasn’t the idea of being broken down into component parts that bothered him. If there was enough left of him undamaged when he died, which statistically would be in the field within the next three years, if he wasn’t decommissioned before then, his body might help another DRN continue to live. That was a nice thing, a far better thing than the metal in him being auctioned off to the highest bidder.

John was a listed organ donor. Biomech and stem cell scaffold organs had shortened transplant waiting times and decreased the amount of humans that couldn’t get replacement organs, but donating was still important. Dorian wondered if John ever thought about it, parts of him continuing to live but unaware.

Rudy might keep the body, if he was allowed. He’d probably end up experimenting on it. Dorian supposed it didn’t really matter as long as he wasn’t _aware_.

That disgusting place had been minimally professional. There was no known model of neural net neutralizer inside.

Dorian had been too afraid to scan for other conscious androids. He should have done it anyway, and now it was too late.

The precinct would at least ensure that his neural net was correctly off, no residual charges or processes running. It was a security risk. He wouldn’t have to worry about any remaining consciousness.

But, his soul, the root origin of his personality was not part of the net. Did it really shut off while he was deactivated? Did anyone know for sure?

Sometimes, when he closed his eyes, he smelled plastic and dust and it felt like there was no ground under his dangling feet.

 

*

 

Rudy had held quite a few jobs in his time.

There’d been one of the first ones that had been a good situation, a research group for android eye designs, but someone wrote and published another refutation of his damned article during that job, so when the design was completed he was ‘let go’. Two more jobs went the same way before he decided on giving America a try, thinking perhaps some distance would take the edge off his academic disgrace.

But derision crosses oceans as easily as everyone else these days. There’d been eight jobs before he’d left New York, Massachusetts could be completely written off so he hadn’t tried, Atlanta had been sweltering and boring in turns, Houston was worse, and Portland was just a complete disaster.

He was a rubbish manager. Prosthetic skeletal designs bored him to tears, for all he was qualified for it and they didn’t care so much about his old publications since he wouldn’t touch software or wetware in that field. No programming company would take him despite his skillset. Most major robotics programs had him blacklisted as an instructor. Nothing he wrote could be published anywhere of any significance. He was a crazy and an PR risk.

He got contacted a few times by robotics rights group, the well-meaning fringe sort that cried on TV and no one took seriously, not even Rudy. The event he’d written about as inevitability had not yet come to pass; there simply weren’t systems with the processing capacity yet. It was only something hovering close, but he stayed in touch with a few of them anyway. Didn’t seem as though it could hurt his reputation any further at this point.

He didn’t get much contact from the other spectrum of groups, a mere handful of threats, one instance of petty vandalism back in England. He was willing to consider it a small benefit of his nomadic lifestyle.

Rudy was in his mid-thirties, estranged from his family, with a handful of friends who had no idea what he did for a living scattered across the globe, a PHD he could not use and absolutely nothing to show for any of it.

Then he’d moved into this city.

The city was sometimes referred to as ‘the other silicon valley’, with its cluster of advanced robotics companies and its frontrunner status in android-police integration. It was still in the top 20 global crime cities, even after the war and the bombings of Rudy’s childhood years, but that wasn’t a major concern, just made him pick his flat carefully.

Captain Maldonado hadn’t been the one who hired him, though they’d met around the time he was first hired on with the police, but once she’d made captain she’d made this job worth it, smoothing things over to allow him to get a private lab outside of the main building, bringing all the really interesting tech cases right to him.

One year on from that point and he suddenly found himself with a workspace perfectly to his liking, no warnings in his employee files, a new promotion that gave him the almost exclusive control over the diagnostics and upgrades portion of the precinct’s robotic police force, and consulting work from three other precincts nearby.

He hadn’t stayed in one job in one place for more than two years in…forever and now somehow it had been three. He even ended up unpacking that last box of old junk in his apartment.

The copies of his thesis and all his old darknet publications were in it. He stared at them, how they were existing right there in his hands, for a while but eventually he kept them.

Then, later, when the DRNs weren’t what anyone had been expecting, when Rudy dug into their coding illegally after the first time he spoke with one, when it turned out they were perhaps what Rudy had predicted forever ago, she came to him first.

Rudy had data, encrypted on black drives that only he could access, data on almost a hundred different DRNs, ones that had made complaints or gone emotionally erratic early on, ones that kept it to themselves until it overwhelmed them, ones that tried to kill themselves, ones that were ‘stable’ but hated the police work, ones that were ‘unstable’ and still found the work fulfilling, and the ones that did things, completely unexpected things. 

Dorian had his own entire drive at this point, not that he knew about it. No one really did except for Rudy and Maldonado.

The very last police DRN in the world liked to spin himself 180 degrees in Rudy’s new office chair.

“What is college like?” he asked.

Rudy heard something more like ‘hat ledge dyke’ from under his face shield. “I didn’t make that out Dorian. What’d you say?” He was just doing a little light welding before calling it a day. Something peaceful about welding. That was actually one of the first conversations he’d ever had with John Kennex, but Rudy wasn’t sure the guy remembered it anymore.

Dorian had a strong tendency to engage in lengthy periods of repetitive motion when bored, not when nervous or upset as was more common in certain humans. It was a quirk unique to that facial model group. Dorian’s full identification code was actually _DRN-005-0167-BB-C >Dorian_. Rudy wasn’t sure whether Dorian was aware of the whole thing, but of course, the most important part of it was ‘Dorian’ anyway.

“What is college like? I’ve seen children’s schools. Captain Maldonado went to college. So did John for a shorter time, though he lies about it. You went to college for a long time. Why?”

Rudy turned off the welding torch and set it down. No need to burn another chair. “I suppose part of it was that I wanted to. I had the aptitude for college of course, graduated, ah, high school early. I wanted to do upper level research, and for that you usually need an advanced degree or two. I’ve always had a variety of interests, hard to pick just one, so I ended up getting degrees in mechanical engineering and chemistry, then did graduate work in human factors psychology and computational engineering, and after all that then I got my PhD in robotics design.”

Dorian nodded like that made sense, which was typical, because Dorian was usually one of the few who consistently understood what Rudy was saying.

But of course he had to ask, “Why do you work here then?”

Rudy smiled to himself bitterly, back turned to Dorian “Well, I wasn’t always such a cautious and reasonable man. Made some mistakes in my youth I’m afraid to say.”

“The hacking?”

“Oh no, no. Much worse things.” Who didn’t learn to hack in this day and age? The hacking was a minor splotch on his record and nothing more. He’d never gotten caught for the really big hacks anyway, the real reason certain people remembered the old Aphid persona.

Dorian had stopped spinning. One of his internal query lights was running. The visible relay design feature first showed up in an early pre-SV design, from a company that had since gone through a merger with Morph Inc. It had really been for quick diagnostics, any tech who understood the indicator system would be able to quickly identify a problem, but it had been so well received by the public for various reasons that it had swiftly ended up on most models.

“You wouldn’t have hurt anyone,” Dorian said.

It mattered, it really mattered a great deal that Dorian still thought that well of him, after the memories and the diagnostics and the whole decommissioning farce, all of it. Rudy had to close his eyes for a moment.

“No, nothing like that. Still the sort of thing people aren’t willing to put aside however.”

His first serious publication had rocked the proverbial academic boat. But the second paper was the one that had cost him the research grant, the one about the future Intrinsic Consciousness Singularity Event and what it might look like. No one wanted to fund a crazy, and writing persuasively about the inevitability of synthetic emotional programming to reach the ability to internally generate and process emotions separate from external stimuli, that synthetic emotions would eventually reach equal complexity with the real, organic thing, that was ‘crazy’.

At some point public opinion had simply shifted, one of those massive shifts with no one point of origin, and the idea of a self-emotive machine was now ludicrous, even if it was still an inevitable reality.

Well, it had been inevitable.

Sometimes in odd moments Rudy wondered if Vaughn had read his paper. There hadn’t been a chance to ask.

“I don’t think I understand,” Dorian said.

“To be perfectly honest with you Dorian, I never have either.”

 

*

 

John was not a subtle man, but if you wanted to understand him, the moods and needs he didn’t articulate, it was all in the subtleties.

John rarely smiled fully or laughed out loud. He didn’t often raise his voice. He was not fidgety, Dorian fidgeted more, though John sometimes gestured while speaking. When John was angry he became very quiet. Most days he only made seven distinct facial expressions.

Some people somehow mistook this as being inexpressive.

John was so _very_ expressive.

Everything he was feeling he showed, but it was in the flick of dark eyes in a direction, the tilt of shoulders and hips as he walked, the quirk at corner of his mouth, up or down, one side or both, a twitch of eyebrows, the positioning of his hands.

It was not something they’d programmed Dorian with, to watch for these things instead of using facial expression recognition, macro and micro, or heartrate and breathing patterns or neurotransmitter levels. It had taken him weeks of trial and error and careful repetition to learn.

Now, Dorian could just watch John, like humans did when they knew each other, watch his face and body and limbs and memorize everything they told him without needing any of his social subroutines.

So Dorian watched, when they were in the car or in the lab or in the precinct building, when John brought Dorian with him to little restaurants and dingy bars, when John was content and pretending not to be, when he made that one weird face instead of laughing, when he was tired compared to when he was exhausted, when his right hip or left ankle or spine were hurting.

Dorian watched everything the first time John brought him along those times when he turned his locator chip off with the manual override device he shouldn’t technically have, saw the odd look on his face when Dorian pulled on one of John’s dark jackets and left his uniform one in the car as instructed. The jacket was a little too big, hanging over his thumbs.

He watched John walk what had to be a familiar route, saw which informants he was harsh or friendly with, which neighborhood gossips he flirted with or purchased from. He bought Dorian a long sleeved t-shirt from a stand run by an old woman, white hair striking against her tan skin. She laser etched DRN in dark grey onto a black shirt without question. John grinned and let her pat the side of his face and asked her something about fish.

The shirt was soft and thin in Dorian’s hands, much less distinctive than the grey uniform shirt John’s jacket was hiding. John nudged him into a badly lit alley to change, nodded silently at someone who walked by.

John was a known entity in the neighborhoods along the Wall or near the old docks, where the high density made drone surveillance untenable, where contraband moved more openly and murderers still went unreprimanded. It must have taken him significant time after the coma to recreate such a network.

He wondered why John hid that so carefully.

Dorian watched everything and stored it away on its own stripe unit, encrypted with a variation of DRN sensitive data procedures and hidden under a simple partition.

He wasn’t supposed to know how or even that it was possible for him to self-encrypt memory data, but Rudy had talked about it for over an hour one night and as talkative as Rudy could be on the right topics, he didn’t do things like that accidentally.

Dorian kept the memories close together and let any new algorithms develop between them undisturbed.

 

*

 

Of course there was a power vacuum with the Bishop gone. Nobody envied the Vice departments, who’d been putting in so much overtime the last few months someone’s MX actually went into emergency shutdown in their car and had to be carried to the Factory.

It wasn’t like the Organized Crime and Homicide department weren’t plenty busy themselves. A few gang territories had shifted. There were new suppliers and new dealers trying to make a grab for power, some more clumsily than others, pissing off established dealers who made their anger very known. A few suspicious characters turning up in the ER had kicked off this little raid; one of the abandoned house fronts that sat under a mag rail line was apparently serving as a handoff point for a new supplier of hallucinogenics. One of the dealers supposedly involved had ties to Sugar Teeth, a local group, who had a rep for being cheap and not caring what kind of crap they cut their product with. Put a lot of dumb teenagers in the hospital.

Everything went fine until the wrap up. The supplier had given in immediately, her hands in the air, the four dealer’s present following suit. John and Dorian had pulled on gloves, started checking the fabricated government mail containers to see what they were dealing with when there was another burst of shouting.

John ignored it at first. The tiny, angry supplier had been yelling almost nonstop, but he caught a flick of motion in the corner of his eye; one of the new dealers was trying to make a run for it, was pulling a gun.

He knew he wouldn’t get to his gun in time, turned and lunged sideways instead, pulling Dorian around by the arm from where he’d leaned over to scan a box.

The shot hitting the vest shoved him back into Dorian’s chest.

He heard Dorian fire as he was wheezing for the air that the shot had knocked out of him. Dorian’s shot was perfect, partially though the dealer’s upper arm, minimal long term risks and got the gun down on the ground. He even set John down leaning over his knees to catch his breath before cuffing the guy and handing him off to an EMT.

Still pretty well done as far as these shitshows went. There was _always_ something.

But now Dorian was scowling. He’d scowled while the handheld x-ray was run over John’s chest, scowled while John sat on the back of the ambulance and let some twitchy EMT put a stabilizer strap around his ribs that he didn’t need and would take off in about an hour, scowled at John while they hid from Paul behind the ambulance so John could let Dorian help him pull his shirt back on. His left arm was going to be annoying for a few days.

John put up with it until they were walking back to the car to go start on the massive pile of paperwork this would of course need. “What’s with the face? Thought I had a happy toaster.”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Dorian almost yelled.

John froze next to his car door. “Huh?”

“What were you even thinking?”

John gaped at him. “Are you, are you mad at _me_?”

“ _Yes!_ ”

“Why’re you mad at _me_? _He_ shot at us!”

“You jumped in front of a _bullet_ John.”

“I didn’t _jump_ , I… and I had my vest on.”

“That’s not the damn point! You’ve literally seen me get shot 17 different occasions now and...”

“So? He was aiming right at the back of your head. It could’ve screwed up your memories. We’d have been useless at work for weeks. Hey! Tell me I’m wrong.” John yelled when Dorian turned his head away. He was starting to feel pissed. It wasn’t like he’d done something stupid.

Dorian stared, turned his head away and pulled his lips back from his teeth in that gritted snarl, the one that only showed up when he was really tired or really pissed off.

“You have a _fractured rib_ John.”

“Oh come on, it’s just a bruise! Hey, the vest caught the bullet, I turned you as I was going down, you took out the perp and we’ll be back at work Monday, no more brain damage for anybody. No problem!”

“Don’t you ever do that again.”

“The fuck Dorian.”

Dorian grabbed John’s left wrist in one hand, leaned closer to his face than he’d usually dare. “Never again. You hear me John?”

John yanked away and Dorian let him. “No!  I… where are you going?”

“Home.”

“Oh for, just wait a minute, that’s miles from here!”

“I’ll fucking walk.”

And he did, vanishing stiffly around the corner while John stared after him, open mouthed and wondering what the hell had just happened.

Paul sidled up behind him, hands shoved in his pockets. “If you’re waiting for anyone to disagree with him, keep on waiting. Jumping in front of an armored bot. It’s like something out of a bad romance movie.”

“Shut up Paul,” he said absently.

Paul just laughed at him the little bastard. “That was weak Kennex.”

John drove himself to Rudy’s lab, got parked in time to see Dorian come over an alley wall and shove his hands back in his pockets, obviously still fuming. And whoever had coded him to be able to fume like a pissy teenager, Vaughn or otherwise, someday John would get the chance to make them pay.

John jogged over to catch up before he vanished inside, and ow his fucking chest was really starting to ache, but he still wasn’t sorry. What was he supposed to do, stand there stupidly and watch Dorian get his head blown off like some redshirt character on a vid show? Dorian slowed down when he called to him, but didn’t turn.

They ended up standing silently in the shadow of what had turned into Dorian’s tower, that disused former steeple staircase they all pretended was an apartment.

Dorian still wouldn’t look up at him. “It’s not that I’m ungrateful. The first two times meant more to me than I could ever express.”

“What two times?”

“That you defended me from harm.”

John tried to think what he might be talking about and could only come up with the hostage mess from that failed palladium heist and the damn XRN. “Well I had to do something.”

Dorian smiled soft and crooked. “Not really man.”

John tried not to think about that too hard but it never made it any less true.

“You ever do something like this again I’m tossing _you_ out on the highway,” Dorian said suddenly.

John hummed, tried very , very hard not to laugh. “Ok. I won’t bounce or anything, I’ll just squish everywhere, but you can keep my leg to remember me by.”

“That’s cool. It can stay in my charge pod with me. I like it better than you half the time anyway. Much sweeter personality.”

John could tell Dorian was still mad and John still wasn’t sorry and wasn’t going to be, but he couldn’t help grinning at that.

A passing MX had stopped to stare at them from the side lot. John smiled at it, too wide with too many teeth showing and without blinking, the way that Dorian (and Pelham before him, and Sandra before him) said made him look mentally unhinged.

The MX left at .35% faster than its usual walking pace.

“What is wrong with you,” Dorian said evenly.

“Lots. Thought you’d know that by now. Aren’t you supposed to be observant or something?”

“Whatever you say John,” Dorian said, but there was very little about John that Dorian thought was actually wrong.

 

*

 

John was fine.

It had been obvious John was fine, even as the shot had flung him backwards into Dorian’s grasp and part of his short term memory allocation nearly shorted out in shock. There’d been no scent of blood, no wound, and the target to acquire had been both obvious and slow.

He’d still wanted to aim for the skull and keep firing until there was nothing left. Wet organic mush incapable of awful thoughts.

But that kind of aberrant behavior got noticed, and John was grinning up at him from the dirty floor of the building, still pale and wheezing but _fine_.

John was completely fine, except for still being an _ass_.

Dorian watched Dark Star that night, which was hardly distracting, but let him avoid charging, because he knew in that semi-aware state that every little sound around him was going to turn into the soft thud of John falling back stunned against his chest and the way he hadn’t been _breathing_.

For a moment Dorian had almost thought he’d just caught John’s corpse.

After the second time he paced through the lab grumbling about how it was too damn quiet, which was something John would do and Dorian _didn’t_ except apparently now he did, Phillip took it upon himself to sing, tinny and a little awful, but the old electropop music that Dorian liked best, from back in the teens.

He left his door cracked open with a rattley crate kicked behind it and huddled up in the bottom half of his charger, arms tight around legs, and let the noise stay registered as input as he put himself subconscious.

 

*

 

It was just supposed to be one drink.

Valerie had genuinely shocked herself when she agreed to meet Jake again.

It had thrown her, but not really in an upsetting way, having that first conversation with him, because it had been a real _conversation_ , not just people saying some words in each other’s general direction when they didn’t want to see you. Valerie hadn’t had a conversation with a Chrome since she was a child.

Maybe she shouldn’t have let that go on for so long.

At some point she’d forgotten to even wonder if there were other Chromes like her, the ones who didn’t _perform_ correctly, didn’t have the successes that were expected, took the wrong kind of jobs and wore all the wrong clothes. Some Chromes spent years indulging in laziness, drifted from interest to interest, but it wasn’t the same. They all did something _appropriate_ eventually. Didn’t they?

She’d agreed to go for a drink later because he had helped her when he could have made her life more difficult, because he’d asked politely, because when she said she enjoyed being part of the police force all he said was ‘ok’. No one ever just believed her like that. What she wanted had never been enough.

She let him pick the place because it was just a drink. She had him meet her at the precinct after work because it was neutral ground, maybe because she wanted to see if he just, accepted it again. They went somewhere fancier than she normally liked, which she’d expected of course, but it was just for a drink.

“What kind of wine do you like? They have a lot of good ones here and seems like you guys have had a hell of a day.”

“Mm, surprise me.” Valerie liked that he’d asked instead of trying to impress her with ‘wine knowledge’ or something. She’d never cared to know much about wine.

“Ohh, let’s see if I can.”

A glass of a delicious, almost spicy red turned into three drinks and a walk for donuts from that stand she liked nearby and having to call a ride home because it’d gotten so late and so cold.

Jake was funny, self-depreciating in a way Chromes never were on principle. They both talked about work and it didn’t get awkward. His stories weren’t rehearsed and somehow he cajoled her into telling some of hers. She’d guessed lawyer on sight, but he worked in intellectual property law most of the time, which had set them off on a tangent about open data policies and cybercrime which had turned into the second drink. Sometime during the third drink had been looking at pictures of his brother’s sculptures and teasing him about his complete indifference to sports of all kinds. 

They were sitting in a deserted row of café tables, hothouse blueberry donuts in hand when Jake said, “You should pick the place to meet next time. These are delicious.”

Stahl froze mid-bite, sat back and started to chew slowly. They’d been talking about dogs. Jake was sitting across from her in a suit that had probably cost more than she’d spent on clothes in two years with neon purple sugar on his fingers.

He gave her a beseeching frown, a little over the top and genuine. “Do I get another chance? I hope I get another chance. I had, fun talking tonight.”

Valerie swallowed hard. “Me too.”

 

*

 

Dorian sometimes considered outright asking John if he was aware of the fact that Dorian technically wasn't allowed to tell him no.

He could. Of course he could, he wasn't an MX. But the police protocols for androids forbade any disobedience of instructions from an officer unless that instruction also broke protocol. Dorian had never thought much of the protocols himself.

He doubted that John was aware. It was the type of interpersonal detail John preferred to ignore, like Captain Maldonado’s rank or minor traffic laws. He’d once overheard an officer say that John was one of those officers that cared more about the intentions of the law than the letter. It seemed a fair description.

Dorian was still unsure if that statement had been meant to be a compliment or a critique. He knew which option he preferred.

John had been talking about something but Dorian had been listening to the sound of his voice without making any attempt to process the words. He didn’t understand the point of sports. He’d even asked Valerie to explain it to him once.

John took a sip of his coffee and grimaced.

“There is nothing wrong with your coffee other than the fact that it is your fourth cup today. You won’t get a fifth,” he said.

John scowled. “If I want to drink coffee until my heart stops that’s exactly what I’ll do.”

Dorian decided not to validate that statement with any kind of a response.

But a secondary thought seemed to speak for him. “You are generally _less_ bossy than you are allowed to be.”

John used the red light to stare over at him. His brow was furrowed slightly, an improvement from when that had used to be its constant state. “Where’d that come from?”

“You almost never order me around man. You talk to me same as other people you know.”

“Please. I tell you to do stuff all the time.”

“Not really. You most often _ask_ me to do things. I’d accuse you of being polite and thoughtful,” John scoffed and Dorian turned his head away so John couldn’t see him smile, “but I think it’s more likely your ability to learn through positive reinforcement.”

“Positive reinforcement. Positive? Here I am, _inundated_ with Dorian opinions. You eat like a slob John. You need to get out more John. You should let me drive your car John. You don’t need coffee John. You’re _boooring_ John.”

Dorian ignored the terrible attempt at a mimicry of his voice. “You’d rather if I sang in the car more?”

“You sing in the car more it won’t be _coffee_ I’m drinking too much of,” John grumbled.

Dorian shook his head.

John continued to miss the conversational subtly of speaking to Dorian like a real person. It was one of his more appealing character flaws, though it was only sometimes a flaw, that pixilated way of thinking. Details came together but weren’t interconnected and Dorian was never sure how that could coexist in the same brain that was so quick with intuitive logic. Human cognition made no sense.

Sometimes he looked at John and wanted to thank him for the courtesy, just once, actually articulate gratitude for the simple courtesy of being _spoken to_. It felt like kindness, perhaps it was a kindness, some other expression of the gentleness that John only showed to small children or terrified young women, that Dorian had been extended long before they really knew each other, before John even liked him at all.

He didn’t have the words, to make John really understand. The leg would have to do.

The music station began playing an older pop song Dorian liked. John made a sound of disgust.

“Turn that crap off would you?”

“Nope. Sorry man, I like this one,” Dorian said, turned up the volume and began to sing.

 

*

 

Dorian didn’t do it so much anymore, the mimicking thing.

John had never asked him about it, or asked Rudy, or bothered to look up anything about it on vifi himself. But it hadn’t taken him too long working together to notice that Dorian mimicked things constantly, mimicked people.

He’d see a facial expression or a gesture or hear someone make a sound and then he’d try it out, gaits and smiles, waves or winks, nervous twitches, voices. It was always in multiple situations too, in the car, at work, walking around near other people. John watched him do it over and over.

The mouth-noise tick he’d done right from the start, like it was something essential in his makeup though why anyone would have bothered to program that was beyond him. But the other one had done it too, exactly the same. It was a DRN-thing, not a Dorian-thing.

And the fact that that distinction even existed still threw him sometimes.

Some things Dorian dropped quick, after only one or two tries. Some things, like the pitchy whine in his voice when he was frustrated or holding anything he was drinking with both hands even though it was basically impossible for him to drop it, he kept like he’d picked those habits out like a new shirt.

At some point John had realized he was watching Dorian do in weeks what humans had years to learn, building up a repertoire of expressions, sounds, gestures to suit his personality and social needs. Faces he liked the feel of. Noises to make John pay attention to him even when he didn’t feel like doing it. He'd been more rigid at first, less expressive than he was now, and John knew some of that had been that they didn't know each other yet, but some of it had been this. John had watched Dorian build his persona day by day, right in front of him.

It wasn’t how humans did it. Wasn’t how they grew. John knew he made some of his mom's facial expressions, that he gestured sometimes when he talked because his dad always had. You just picked up that stuff over time. Everything Dorian chose had been consciously examined and chosen by some algorithm nobody understood.

Still, watching him do it had felt like a privilege.

 

*

 

It was sleeting _again_.

Traffic accidents were up, as people were used to leaning on the automations and forgot to take the unpredictable shit weather into account. All other crime was way low, because the _criminals_ seemed to have the sense to stay inside out of the frozen slop and get trashed off eggnog too early in the year or slip into a coma in front of the TV.

But John skidded his way into work because all the normal, _rational_ people didn’t have any sense whatsoever.

“I’m so sick of winter,” he grumbled at his monitor.  

“It’s only been winter for four weeks. There are at least ten weeks of winter left for you to be sick of,”

“That’s so helpful Dorian.”

Dorian grinned. “Happy to help.”

Ug. Why was he here. There was nothing to work on. He could have worked over his cold cases from home. Dorian could cross examine ideas just as easy over comms from Rudy’s lab as here. He didn’t like to be damp. Everything was damp and there was nothing to do.

But this leg did better in the damp, same way it did better with everything else. So after another hour of busywork he’d finally pestered Dorian into signing them off to use the police obstacle course off the peninsula. There wasn’t a lot of competition for time today.

“This is really stupid timing John.”

Dorian had taken off his jacket for mobility. It wasn’t like the cold air was going to bother him. John had changed into an ancient sweatshirt he’d found in his locker and pulled the hood up tight.

“Eh, the sleets just another obstacle. Seriously I spend any more time at a desk I’m gonna lose it. You ready?”

“Are we racing?” Dorian asked way too cheerfully. 

“How would that work? You don’t really need to breathe.” Dorian gave him a disgusted look, and yeah they both knew John knew how the heat exchange worked when Dorian breathed.

“We’d pick something to inhibit my performance, so you could try to keep up.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“I could try running the course without optics perhaps. I haven't tried to function on sonar before.”

Right, cause running full tilt with suddenly reduced awareness was a great idea. “Hey you do however you want, just don’t break anything.”

“Shouldn’t I be the one saying that to you man?”

Racing was idiotic, but they lunged for the first wall at the same moment anyway.

 

*

 

Dorian didn’t mess with his sensors, he just ran slow, stayed far enough ahead to provide a challenging opponent but not so far as to become demotivating or to lose track of John’s movements.

John still didn’t fully utilize the push off capability of his synthetic leg and he favored his right arm strangely sometimes, but he was still performing in the 87th percentile for men of his age and size. Climbing barely slowed him down and he did not hesitate at heights.

John started teasing him to run faster on the last quarter of the course, but Dorian ignored him until they reached the final length of flat ground where he leapt into his maximum speed.

John laughed behind him and _sprinted._

John had said he was fast. Captain Maldonado had said he was fast. Humans could not generally run this fast. Dorian would admit to being surprised by the shear _speed_.

He kept pace with Dorian’s maximum safe speed for a full twelve seconds before staggering to a walk and hitting the dirt behind him.

Dorian used a looping turn around to slow his own pace without staggering.

John was laughing on the wet ground, elbows and knees soaked in mud. “Ow. I’m gonna pay for that later.”

Dorian reached down, gripped him around the forearm to help him up.

“I’m glad you like your leg John.”

John was still laughing faintly, endorphins, adrenaline. He lowered his right foot to the ground with a badly hidden grimace and patted the flat of his palm against Dorian’s chest. He let it rest against Dorian's shirt for a moment. Dorian couldn't feel the heat of it through the armor after the long exposure to cold air. It still felt alive.

John smiled with his upper teeth. “It’s working for me.”

 

*

 

Dorian still had the foreign memories.

It was really still just the one memory, lying in a bed playing with a toy train, but he both could see it from a distance and feel the toy in his hands every time so perhaps it was two memories that had conjoined.

After the surprise and the novelty of the experience had worn off he’d deleted it. The memory wasn’t his. He’d never been a child. Perhaps this had come from something faulty with his memory redaction process, or perhaps something another bot he’d connected with over the last few months had recorded. He’d told John about it out of sheer surprise, but the strange memory didn’t overly concern him. He’d had and lost many.

19.2 hours later the memory was back.

That he had not expected. Dorian knew how to manipulate android files, knew far more about it than he was cleared to due to his many conversations with Rudy. He’d already figured out how to retrieve his procedural memory data from behind the episodic memory wipe firewall, which shouldn’t be possible. He’d manipulated the old DRN file share system to set up the ping chat with Darren. He even knew how to strip out or reconstruct MX memory data. Anything he decided to delete should stay gone.

But when he deleted it again it came back in 20.3 hours.

He kept trying. Every time it came back it was less of a surprise. The sensations of the bed and the toy against small digits didn’t make him glitch or freeze up on the job with John. The memory just clicked back into place, no matter how many times he tried to get rid of it. It never stayed gone longer than 23 hours.

The memory itself was not frightening. Dorian supposed that was fortunate at this point, because apparently it was in his neural net to stay.

This time he didn’t tell anyone.

 

*

 

John was running late again, would likely swagger in within the next ten minutes, a cup of coffee in hand, but it hadn’t had to annoy Dorian in months. It only took him seven minutes to walk over from Rudy’s lab and check himself in to work now. There were more benefits than privacy to not living in the Factory anymore.

Detective Stahl walked in next to her MX and the little plant Dorian had seen over the doorway this morning chimed at them.

She looked up and sighed. “Oh, seriously guys? Who put this up?”

No one answered her, but a few people laughed and then made that weird ooooo sound when she tugged her MX down by one shoulder strap and pressed a quick kiss against his cheek.

Dorian blinked.

MX-43-700 stayed still, remaining leaned forward exactly where Stahl had placed him when she stepped away again, a red processing indicator spinning continuously on his face.

Stahl noticed after a moment and giggled behind her coffee mug. “I’m sorry Max. That was rude of me.”

The MX, apparently Max, straightened. “It is a human gesture.”

“Yup. Mistletoe is a holiday tradition. It’s very bad luck not to kiss under it,” Stahl said seriously, but Dorian could tell the seriousness was a front.

After another moment the MX said, “Understood.”

Max sat down very primly in his seat at Stahl’s desk while she picked up some data tablets at the front desk and let Tech Munson tease her.

“How much preferential movement will you accumulate for that?” Dorian asked in the hushed subtonals that the MXs sometimes used to speak to each other. The system of seniority that allowed MX’s to always know which one would move first in a group was more complex than it first appeared. 

Max still had a processing light running and he didn’t bother to look up at Dorian. “Indeterminate,” he said.

Even Dorian knew it would be a lot.

John _was_ late and he was carrying coffee.

Dorian had let himself get impatient, and used John’s voice to schedule them a follow-up interview with a business owner near the third robot recycling center that had suffered a break in. Technically he’d done so with Stahl’s permission, but she hadn’t expected him to pretend the decision hadn’t been his own initiative.

All three centers had contained no DRN parts and all three had reported nothing stolen. Anyone could see the pattern. Rudy had haltingly tried to suggest Dorian not go outside for walks for a while, but Dorian felt that attempted theft of inanimate parts was a different level of committed effort than acquiring an operational and combat capable android would be. But he’d promised Rudy he’d be careful when he’d frowned.

Dorian stood to meet John on the steps and let him know where they were going, passing over the stack of John’s reports he’d proofread yesterday.

A jingly little chime played.

Dorian tried not to cringe. He’d completely forgotten about the mistletoe.

John peered up and groaned loudly. “Who the hell put this shit up?”  

No one responded, but John reached up and tugged Dorian’s head forward with the back of his hand and pressed his mouth in a hard kiss against the top.

His hair was insensate of course, but he felt the soft pressure, the exhale and the warmth of it and.

Oh.

John stepped back, struck him gently on the upper arm with his handful of celos, something he’d started doing after three weeks of working together. Dorian understood on some level it meant affection. It had startled him the first time.

“I’ll be right back after I file these and we’ll head out,” he said.

Dorian nodded.

He walked back to his seat instead of standing, feeling like perhaps one of his processors was malfunctioning, but he knew that couldn’t be it. He set his hands in his lap so he didn’t touch his own skull. There was nothing there.

Max was staring at him. “Query, malfunctioning?”

Dorian blinked at him. “No malfunction. Temporary disruption,” he said slowly. MX’s typically assumed him to always be malfunctioning. They didn’t query if he was experiencing a particular issue.

Max’s eyes went fixed, a processing light flaring. He was actually scanning Dorian for hardware errors. “Confirmed.”

“Thank you Max,” he said.

Max turned back to his desk space and opened one of Stahl’s reports with a blink. “Unnecessary and inefficient conversational modifier.”

Dorian snorted. “Of course it is,” he said in a normal whisper.

Max ignored him.

Dorian decided later against telling anyone that it had been Richard who brought the mistletoe replica into the building, or that he’d made his MX put it up because he couldn’t reach the top of the doorframe himself.

Somehow it didn’t seem fair to anymore.

 

*

 

Captain Maldonado stopped by their desks after the lunch hour began and most of the other detectives and staff that worked nearby had already left the building. John had refused to let Dorian talk him out of eating that morning’s leftover donuts for lunch, but Dorian had decided he might as well continue to try. So far John had eaten two donuts.

“Got any Christmas plans John?” she asked.

“Uh,” John shrugged, left hand out and open.

“Good. I’m dragging you back with me again this year.”

“Oh. Ok. Family on your case again?” he said, grinning as if that had explained everything.

She sighed heavily. “I don’t feel like giving them a chance to start. And you think it’s funny.”

“Hey, your dad’s an amazing cook and your brother and sisters think I’m charming,” he said, looking smug.

“Have they met you frequently?” Dorian blurted out, without considering that perhaps Captain Maldonado would not appreciate his informal speech as much as John always did.

He was getting too careless.

John tossed a paperclip at him. “You’re hilarious.”

Captain Maldonado looked bemused, but not offended by his informality. It had been the likely result, but was still a relief. Dorian should have been more careful.

“My siblings can’t quite grasp the difference between managing an entire department of detectives and driving around on patrol like a new officer, or why I’m not married yet.”

“And John is, helpful?”

“They think a younger man in my profession would be just perfect for me,” she said wryly.

John made a sudden dismayed sound and flailed, trying to catch the half of his donut that had crumbled off and was rolling down his shirt.

“Yeah, he’s a real catch,” Dorian said very flatly.

She laughed. John and Valerie were usually the only people to make her laugh, so Dorian felt a warm sense of achievement at the sound. John glared at them, looking betrayed even with powdered sugar down his shirt.

“Come with me for a moment, would you Dorian? We’ll leave John to his _lunch_ ,” she said pointedly. John stuck his tongue out at her.

“Of course Captain,” Dorian said with the correct amount of professional formality. Perhaps she was dissatisfied with something. He followed her into her office, where he’d rarely been without having accompanied John, and she left the glass transparent so it must be for something simple.

“If I’m stealing John for the holiday would you do me a favor?” she said.

Dorian blinked. This was, not what he’d been expecting. “Yes. Of course. What did you want me to do?”

John would already be berating him for agreeing before hearing what was wanted, but Dorian never saw the point in that. It hardly mattered in his situation.

“Pry Rudy out of the lab at some point, would you?”

This was not that unexpected a task. The only other task she’d ever asked him for privately had been to keep an eye on John. “You do not want Rudy working through the holiday.”

“He’s got the days off. And since John’s not working Christmas this year so do you.”

Oh.

“We watch vids sometimes,” he offered hesitantly. John and Rudy knew he watched vid shows, Rudy’d been the one to suggest it, but technically Dorian’s time still belonged to the precinct when he wasn’t accompanying John. He’d been under much less scrutiny in the lab, despite Rudy’s initial invasiveness.

“That’s fine. Pick something outside of his lab or his apartment and make him take you there. Even if it’s just a movie or something, ok?”

“Yes Captain.”

She gave him a small smile. “This isn’t an official task Dorian. It was John’s idea to move you into the lab space, but I appreciate that you’ve been supportive of Rudy’s health while you've been there.”

Appreciate was a nice word. “Thank you. Captain, would John usually work over the holiday?”

“Yes. I’m sure he will next year.”

“He does not typically accompany you to your family home?”

“Only a few times, not always for Christmas. For a while there wasn’t any need,” she said wryly.

Oh. Perhaps she’d lost someone. He hadn’t meant to bring up any personal topics. Or perhaps she only meant the timing of John’s loss of his parents. He didn’t ask.

“One more thing? Keep this between us. Don’t tell Rudy it was my idea. Touchy subject.”

“I understand,” he said. Dorian knew she was referring to their whole conversation, not just Rudy’s tendency to overwork. He understood the desire for privacy.

 

*

 

They were at a red light later when Dorian said, “Both you and Captain Maldonado are bisexual.”

He didn’t say it like a question. Perhaps John should be wondering how in the hell he knew that, but Dorian noticed all kinds of crap no one gave him credit for. Not that he couldn’t just find out in the vifi somewhere. Everyone knew the privacy laws about certain topics passed back in the twenties had accomplished next to nothing.

“Yeah? What about it?”

“Nothing really.”

John glanced at him after he’d stayed quiet a minute, but Dorian was idly watching stuff go by out the window, so maybe he’d just let the topic go.

“It’s just, something I forget to think about.”

Seriously, guy never just let anything go. “What, attraction? Romance? Preferences? Because as much as I didn’t need to, somehow I’m stuck knowing you _masturbate_ and have opinions about _porn_. That and the damned dating profile. Tell me you really took that down.”

“I did. It wasn’t helping you. And, physical preferences I guess.”

“Yeah, humans generally have _needs_ Dee. Or did you not try and get me to get out there more for months on end?”

“I suppose I considered it a simple mechanical process not an inter-relational one, for casual encounters. There’s a social aspect of course, but I think I was thinking about the extent of it with the wrong theories.”

It took John three blocks to even guess at what Dorian was talking about. “You’re talking about attraction?”

“Maybe I am. I have a substantial amount of knowledge about the different ways human social dynamics manifest in sexual relationships and their effects on crime, but I think I’m missing something fundamental. Things that made logistical sense didn’t work when applied.”

“You think hook ups aren’t social?”

“Maybe? How would a casual encounter involve attraction? There’s obviously a physical preference in place for most humans, but that’s beside the point.”

Those sentences didn’t quite make sense. “Dorian what is it you think attraction is?”

Dorian’s face fell, went from frustrated engagement to resigned disappointment in about two seconds. He shouldn’t be able to _do that_ , react on the fly, plaster it all over his face. “I am missing something.”

He turned away. John sighed, squeezed his face against his new headache. “I’m just not quite catching what you’re getting at here Dee.”

“I suppose I don’t understand why the physical body would be a primary issue at all, in a relationship. Why would that matter, if you loved someone?”

Uh.

Dorian was serious, watching and waiting patiently like John would have a good answer to give him about why people preferred blonds or brunets or blue eyes or brown or why people would stay with a partner that got disfigured or why other times they’d feel they needed to leave.

“I suppose, most people figure out if they’re attracted to someone before you actually start a relationship, before love ever even comes into it. Not always, but most of the time. I mean, you know I’ve generally got a type. Rudy uh, likes everything. Sandra and I both prefer women, but not exclusively or anything. Stuff’s complicated.”

There was a lot of blue light spinning in the corner of John’s vision.

“Attraction does not typically follow love? In a sequence of events. Those things are, independent for humans?”

“Yeah. For a lot of them, for most actually. I’m really not an expert on this stuff Dee. You should probably ignore me.”

“No, that was, informative. I hadn’t… realized.”

Dorian was abnormally quiet the rest of the day. Little spurts and traces of blue told John he was thinking busily about something in there, but not much else. John played the radio and tried not to read into it too much.

 

*

 

Dorian had already filed his full report of the events of the day, but it seemed John had more to add to his, so Dorian lingered as the night shift trailed in and out nearby. They were mostly out getting coffee at this time of day. John yawned noisily and hit send.

A little chime of jingle bells played when they walked out of the office and John froze.

Dorian frowned up at the odd, fake mistletoe. Why had Richard left it here when there was no one to tease? Wasn’t that the point of hanging it up in an office?

“Godamnit,” John muttered.

Dorian was about to speak, to say…something, but John set a hand between Dorian’s shoulders and pressed his mouth in a quick, firm kiss against his temple, the backs of his knuckles briefly touching the line of Dorian’s jaw. The skin of his face was not insensate like his hair. John’s mouth was hot and dry, the tip of his nose cool, the rough and soft rasp of human skin textures made him forget to exhale.

Dorian had had _no idea_. There was _so much_. 

“You didn’t have to,” he said after a moment.

John tipped his chin down and smiled briefly. “Ah, its bad luck otherwise. We don’t need any extra,” he said, nudging his shoulder against Dorian’s when he moved to walk forward again. “Have a good break I guess. God, I wish we were working. Don’t you and Rudy have plans? What’re you guys doing?”

“I haven’t decided where we’re going yet. Rudy said he had plans on the 25th but that we should do something on the 24th. I am supposed to pick an activity.”

John lurched to a halt and pointed at Dorian’s face. “Do not go to a bar, just you and Rudy. Don’t do that. That is not an activity that’s an option here. Sandra and I are going to be like an hour away.”

John seemed unduly concerned about bars given the fact that they had all gone to one together before. “I hadn’t considered that anyway. Generally, only on New Year’s is it considered acceptable to spend the holiday in a bar.”

John snorted. “Damn right.”

“I’m not sure what we should do. We play your vintage video game collection or go outside. Rudy and I watch vids. I am having difficulty thinking of something appealing that is an acceptable social activity for a holiday.”

“Yeah, don’t overthink it. No bars, but don’t do something lame, ok? Have some fun. Make sure Rudy doesn’t die trying to deal with normal society.”

Dorian smiled. “I’ll keep those stipulations in mind.”

 

*

 

John came across Stahl in that upper side parking lot where most of the detectives kept reserved spaces and there was Stahl was fixing her hair in her car door mirror. At least that’s what it seemed like she was doing. John didn’t know anything about hair.

“Should I leave you and your car alone?” he called, careful not to sneak up on her. Never a good idea to sneak up on anyone in their line of work in the dark.

Stahl straightened up comically fast, yanking her hand back from her hair. “Hey John!” she said, tugging at her jacket, but he could see the sheen of a nice dress underneath it.

“Heading out?” he asked.

“Yeah, I’m uh actually meeting Jake and his brother at Chocolate & Sauce in like, five minutes. I meant to leave earlier, I just…”

That was one of those booze and desserts only places, must be a fancy one nearby. “Wow. Meeting family members. You guys must be moving along pretty well then.”

“I suppose so,” she said, sounding as surprised as he did, but she was smiling brightly. John remembered how that look worked.

“Listen, Stahl, I’m glad you’re happy,” he said because it was worth managing to say it once, just in case. They’d been kind of awkward and over-friendly for a while there, but he didn’t want there to be any hard feelings. He didn’t have any. Having someone to discuss the Knights with was the most important thing right now.

“Well, I promise I won’t tell anyone you’re a romantic sweetie underneath it all John.”

He thumped a hand up over his heart. “Slander and hurtful lies!”

She laughed, waved as she got in her car and left.

It actually didn’t hurt at all.

 

*

 

Late on what many people called Christmas Eve Dorian sent John a ping.

_Rudy and I went to a bug museum. Does that count as something lame? I didn’t realize you could have so many different kinds in one place. I almost thought Rudy was making up so many colors of butterfly, but there really are that many in the world. And so many beetles! I’ve only ever seen crickets, those little brown moths, and roaches. Darren had a really big roach for a while, but he had to take it outside eventually, before it got near someone who would kill it. And out on the vifi there’s even more! I don’t think I’m going to care at all if you think the museum was lame._

John didn’t respond right away, so he was probably still busy with Maldonado’s family holiday activities. Dorian wasn’t sure what those might be like. Most of the traditions he’d discussed with Rudy had been for tomorrow, though what Rudy had planned was some sort of online gaming match between several of his friends, two who were on different continents and one who did not celebrate Christmas.

_Hello Dorian, its Sandra. John’s asleep on my shoulder halfway to shitfaced and already ate three of the cookies my nieces put out for ‘Santa’. We are hiding from my older sister. I’m glad you both had a nice time._

Dorian read the text several times before the meaning registered. John must have had his phone in his pocket. Sandra had heard the buzz. She hadn’t said anything about Darren, or about the tone in which he’d spoken to John, or about why he and Rudy had gone somewhere so public when there’d been 48 other suitable options.

She hadn’t said anything about Darren.

He had to remember to be careful. If he got complacent…

_Thank you Captain._

_It’s just Sandra right now. John has Christmas socks on. My nephew insisted. I’ll send you a pic. Merry Christmas Dorian._

Perhaps, maybe Dorian didn’t need to be much more careful around Captain Maldonado. She was John’s friend, but, maybe she was more like John and Rudy and even Valerie to him than she was like their other bosses. She’d assigned him to John in the first place after all.

_Thank you. Merry Christmas Sandra._

 

*

 

In the last dying days of 2048 John told Dorian goodnight with a clap on the shoulder, gave Rudy a friendly wave, bought some cheap-ass bourbon, and walked to go visit Pelham’s ashes.

The little nook where the jar sat was clean. Empty.

John poured a generous shot of bourbon into a glass and set it there, drank from the bottle until everything started to feel hazy.

He didn’t talk. Pelham wasn’t there to hear it and what the fuck could he even say.

Sandra already had the files up when he got there.

They had off-server copies of everything the force had about InSyndicate. Notes. Theories. Stolen materials and owners and possible buyers. Motivations and sympathies and possible goals.

InSyndicate was essentially another crime syndicate, organized by criminals who funded their crimes with other crimes. There were about a dozen of them operating in the city at any given time.

The difference was they were too well funded, maintained a truly disturbing amount of anonymity in this day and age, and their recruitment spiel had a political/anarchist bent to it that nobody liked. InSydicate openly blamed the representational government system for the damages done in the war. Their members committed to supporting any alternative systems that arose. The higher up you got, you made that commitment visible with ink.

(Or so they’d thought. Anna hadn’t had any tattoos, removed or otherwise.)

The follies of representational government that got railed against any time some lower level peon for InSyndicate got captured, it already didn’t really exist anymore. Government was a bunch of money grubbing bureaucrats, no doubt about that, but vifi transparency laws, open sale, hacktivism, and the sheer lack of privacy they’d all learned to live with had made scheming behind the scenes of things way harder to pull off. It was just the way things were. There were more countries and less cities in the world after the war. It was just different now.

But the way InSyndicate liked to talk, they had something else in mind to take over. And they were willing to steal and buy and trade in bio-weaponry to do it. Not many crime groups wanted to take on that much risk.

They’d also wanted Danica.

No, worse, they’d felt like they’d had a claim to Danica. After they’d hit the station, that’s what had been said. What we’re after doesn’t belong to you. Like there'd been an arrangement.

Something about the way things had gone down with Vaughn felt like a power struggle. Maybe Vaughn really had just snapped under all the stress, but John didn’t really believe that and more importantly neither did Dorian. It looked like a turf war of some kind, but they didn’t even have any guesses as to all the players involved. Or the end goals.

They added it to the list anyway.

It would be good to start the new year up to speed, with a plan of action. It felt better.

“Do you still have our deck?” he asked when she was closing out the updated files. Tapper was conked out on the couch. They’d worked through everything for about four hours. The buzz he’d needed to make himself walk here for this had worn off two hours ago.

They had an old, plastic coated paper double deck of playing cards that they’d always used for poker. A long time ago they’d played almost every week, for candy or bitcoins and sometimes even for the colored chips you were supposed to use.

“Of course. I won the last game so it’s my good luck still.”

Of course she did. Of course it was here. The deck was good luck for whoever won the last game until the next time. He’d almost forgotten.

“We should play sometime.” John hadn’t hung out at Sandra’s place since before the coma. Hadn’t asked to or responded to any invitations to either. Only at work or for work. He knew it hadn’t been fair, but he just couldn’t at first.

Sandra reached up and squeezed his arm. “We will in the new year John. Let me call you a ride. It’s late.”

 

*

 

They dragged Rudy out to the bar with everyone else for New Year’s Eve.

The place was full of people from every department in the precinct and a bunch from the next precinct over as well. Rudy wore his damn stupid hat with a badly clashing pair of slacks. Dorian smiled too much and took John’s keys away around 10. He watched Sandra and John play darts after Rudy ended up deep in conversation with someone with purple hair.

Stahl had pulled Jake in by the hand sometime before midnight, his fancy suit standing out in the crowd badly, but he smiled a lot, acted a little dumber than he probably was to put people at ease, and it wasn’t like John wasn’t familiar with doing that. Good handshake too. Greeted Dorian with actual words, so that was also a plus. He wasn’t bad.

Stahl was no lightweight, but she was a happy drunk, smiling at everything and laughing too loud, leaning along Jake’s side and introducing him to anyone standing near enough. Least Jake seemed to realize how good he had it so that was fine. It really was fine. It was cute actually, but it made John feel like even more of a busted down, old grump than he normally did.

Richard started singing Auld Lang Syne about five minutes too early and wouldn’t stop. John smacked a kiss on Sandra’s cheek as she all but ran out the door after the obligation to stay until midnight was over. Stahl was kissing Jake enthusiastically in the middle of the crowd, which was expected and not really something he wanted to see. Rudy was…Rudy was busy. Yikes. They should leave him to it. 

Richard was still singing from somewhere near the bar. John had to get out of here. This was an awkward fucking disaster all over again. Dorian looked thrilled, had a handful of plastic streamers.

And despite himself John didn’t actually mind any of it one bit.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All thoughts, inarticulate noises, and suspicions for future chapters are welcome. Suspected typos are welcome too as I am my own beta. I've tagged the Valerie/Jake relationship because although it's not a huge part of this story by word count it will be consistent. I thought they were adorable. As of 4/14 there is a new portion from Dorian's pov in the middle of the chapter because I am bad at picking where all the pieces should go before I post things.
> 
> I will make no promises for when the next chapter might arrive. Chapters three and four need some reorganizing, but I would love to get chapter three up around June or July. (There is a part of chapter three you guys are _really_ gonna like. Hint.) The violence/disturbing imagery level will increase a bit as the plot thickens, but not really any worse than the show itself. This story will be complete in seven chapters. Eventually.
> 
> Thanks for reading everyone :)


End file.
